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COPYRIGHT DEPOSffi 



LETTERS TO JACK 



WRITTEN BY A PRIEST TO 
HIS NEPHEW 



By the 

RIGHT EEV. FRANCIS C. KELLEY, D.D., LL.D. 

Author of 
" The Last Battle of the Gods," 
" The City and the World/ ' 
" The Book of Eed and Yellow," 

Etc., Etc. 



With a Preface by His Grace 
AECHBISHOP MUNDELEIN 



EXTENSION PRESS 

223 West Jackson Boulevard 

CHICAGO 

1917 



s^ x 
^ 



Nihil Obstat 

P. L. BlERMANN, 

Censor Deputatus. 
Imprimatur 

George William Mundelein, 

Archbishop of Chicago. 



/ 



B 



FEB -3 1917 



Copyright 1917 
By Francis Clement Kelley 



All rights reserved 



Printed in U. S. A. 
©GU455430 



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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Archbishop Mundelein 's Preface 5 

Noise 13 

Religion 25 

Living 39 

Temptation 45 

Thinking 51 

Friends 59 

Enemies 69 

Rule and Service 81 

Other People 95 

The World 109 

Citizenship 119 

Cleanliness 129 

Love 135 

The Plain Man 143 

The Enthusiast 149 

The Conservative 157 

Criticism 165 

Hatred 173 

Silence 181 

Dreamers . 189 

Old Things 197 

Humility 209 

Inspiration 217 

Opportunities 225 

Loyalty 233 

Burden Bearers 241 

Vision 251 

3 



PREFACE 
By the Archbishop of Chicago 

We are living in a town which possesses a most 
energetic public official. I have rarely, if ever, 
found a harder- working head of department than 
the present Commissioner of Health in the city 
of Chicago. When he goes in pursuit of a disease- 
germ, it is all over with the germ ; for the attack 
will be made with a ferocity that is appalling. So 
say his friends, and they are many. Nor will he 
neglect to ally himself with anyone who can be 
useful to him in stamping out disease when exist- 
ing, or preventing its spread when threatening. 
The writer has good reason to know, for he fell 
a victim to the doctor's persuasive powers, and 
became an ally in the campaign. All this brings 
me to one of the great subjects of discussion 
at the present time. 

The tendency of medical research to-day is 
directed far more towards prevention than cure. 
As soon as a new disease raises its head, or a con- 
tagion appears to spread among children or 
adults, at once the laboratories of the country 
work day and night to find the inimical microbe, 

5 



6 PREFACE 

discover its origin, isolate the germ, and ferret 
out its fertile soil ; it is the application in medi- 
cine of the old adage "an ounce of prevention is 
better than a pound of cure. " If it holds good in 
this corruptible body of ours, why should not the 
same rule apply to the soul ? If we try to ward 
off disease from the infant and the growing child, 
why should we not adopt the same precaution in 
training the growing boy or girl, young man or 
young woman ? Especially does this hold good in 
the case of youth budding into manhood. It is 
then that a lad is angular, somewhat rough and 
uncouth, and by no means attractive in his per- 
sonality; simply because he is emerging from 
boyhood and settling slowly into manhood; be- 
cause then his character is forming, his habits 
becoming more fixed, and he still lacks the finish 
that experience will supply. It is a time when he 
needs good sane advice, given in sugared capsules, 
administered in patient, kindly doses; when he 
should have the prompt infusion of "friendly 
microbes" by a wise physician in order to fight 
the disease germs that he will take in from bad 
companions, from vile literature, from careless, 
conscienceless elders and superiors. It is here 
that this little volume will play its part. I do not 
know whether the author is an uncle or not, but 
he certainly can talk like one. A father really 
ought to be a boy's closest friend, especially in the 



PREFACE 7 

years when lie feels that he is emancipating from 
the domination of the maternal apron-string. But 
most of us know that the father feels he is too busy 
to play that role, or he is fearful that it may bring 
about an infringement on the sacred rights of his 
paternal authority. Of course such an attitude 
never would undermine a father's jurisdic- 
tion; rather such friendly intercourse would 
strengthen, preserve, immortalize it; but most 
fathers find that out too late in life. 

But sometimes you will find a bachelor uncle 
in a family who brings in pocketfuls of candies 
to the youngster, bushels of roses to the de- 
butantes and smiling good advice to the awkward 
squad of young nephews, and to them all he is 
ever a hero, an idol and, later, a depository of 
secrets and a never-ending source of advice. Just 
such a role has the author of this book assumed. 
In an easy conversational style he talks to the 
young fellow about pretty nearly everything. 
Without adding any irritation to his reader's sen- 
sitive spirit of adolescent pride, without brushing 
the furry mustache of the young man the wrong 
way ; finally, without letting the interest lag, he is 
giving him just as much salutary advice as the 
young fellow's system will absorb with ease. At 
the same time he does not assume the preaching 
attitude of a reverent relic of a past generation ; 
but rather he lets the young man feel that he is 



8 PREFACE 

listening to the advice given by a chum, a friend 
who has the one thing that he lacks, namely, ex- 
perience. And it is one of the experiences of those 
who have dealt with young men of today, that they 
listen gladly to advice, just as willingly as their 
sisters. But they do require from the one offer- 
ing counsel and guidance certain qualifications to 
make what he offers palatable and attractive. 
They want to be talked to without any patronizing 
attitude — * ' man to man, ' ' as they say. Then they 
require that the other possesses the necessary 
qualification of knowledge, that he knows what 
he is talking about, that ' ' he has the goods, ' ' as one 
of them expressed it to me. Finally they want 
absolute sincerity, — "on the level," as they term 
it. And then, if the young man once becomes at- 
tached to you, even though he may fail sometimes 
to follow your advice, he is and remains loyal to 
you, even the devil himself cannot tear him from 
you. After many years of dealing with Catholic 
young men, recognizing their frailties, the defi- 
ciencies in their make-up, and the disappointment 
of one's hopes they often produce, yet I maintain 
that one of the most beautiful works in God's 
creation is an honest, clear-eyed, clean-minded 
young Catholic American. I assure you, he is well 
worth saving ; and anything that will help to keep 
him good, hold him steady, prevent him from 
straying, should receive the encouragement of all 



PREFACE 9 

of us who are interested in the saving of souls. 
One of the means to accomplish this is by giving 
him a book that is written especially for him, that 
will interest him, and will prevent the disease 
germs of corruption and bad habits from eating 
their way into his soul. I believe this book of let- 
ters will help some to accomplish this ; and so I 
cordially second the sentiments of the official 
censor of Catholic literature in this Archdiocese, 
who concluded his examination by saying: "I 
would, if I could, put a copy of this book into the 
hands of every young man. ' ' 

George William Mttndelein, 
Archbishop of Chicago. 



I 

NOISE 



The noisy boy is a delight. The noisy man is a 
nuisance. 



Don't be noisy enough to make people think you 
are not genuine; but don't be quiet enough to 
make them think you are a nonentity, or afraid. 



The biggest noise is always made by the biggest 
failure. 



NOISE 
My dear Jack: 

This morning you started down from your bed- 
room on the third floor like a barrel of nails, and 
landed with a thud in front of the breakfast 
table. It is true that you had only a few minutes 
in which to bolt your breakfast, rush for a car, 
and get down to work at the office. Knowing 
that, I said nothing about the noise ; and then I 
wanted to see how far it would go. Breakfast 
over, there was a rush to the door, a bang, a hurry 
down the steps, and peace descended upon me 
again. My Matins finished, I sat for a moment 
to think you out; and I made up my mind 
that you were too much like your uncle at 
the same age ; so I resolved to write you a series 
of letters, and begin on Noise. But the letters 
that I am going to write are not entirely for you. 
I am in hopes that they will reach a multitude of 
Jacks, living all over this broad land of North 
America ; every one of them the son of Catholic 
parents, every one of them beginning life as you 
are, every one of them full of hope and ambition ; 
and, too, every one of them just a plain Catholic 

13 



14 LETTERS TO JACK 

boy who makes a noise now to bother more an- 
cient nerves than those possessed by youth : but 
who expect to make a noise later on in a different 
way that will better, not bother, the world. In- 
evitably I will have to make the general theme of 
my letters the old theme of success; though, 
frankly, I dislike the word. You see, success 
means a different thing to almost every individ- 
ual. My idea of it may not be yours ; but all of 
us know the idea by the same name. I wont 
attempt to define what I mean by it, nor ask you 
what you mean. I am going to try to make these 
letters the definition. 

The worst way to begin a day — any day — is as 
you did this morning. You were due at your 
office at eight-thirty. It is a forty minute walk 
from this house. I heard you get up, because you 
dropped one shoe at exactly seven-thirty. You 
were at breakfast twenty minutes later, which 
means that you dressed carelessly, splashed into 
your bath and out again, had no time to shave, 
rushed through your breakfast and then caught 
a car, though you are young and needed the walk. 
You arrived at your office with the beginnings of 
an indigestion in your system which will be in 
full control of your stomach at thirty. By walk- 
ing you would have saved five cents, though, of 
course, you would have lost it by the wear and 
tear on shoe leather; that, however, would not 



NOISE 15 

have been entirely a loss, for you would, by walk- 
ing, have made a beginning of a good habit, and 
laid the foundation for good health. A walk 
would have meant entrance to your place of work 
with a clear head, a bright eye and a cheerful dis- 
position. You read a paper all the way down- 
town — at least you took a paper as you left the 
house. You, therefore, saw nothing. Had you 
walked, you would have noticed the sun and the 
fact that it is springtime. Had you let your 
thoughts run, you would have been storing up 
things good for you later on. People are far 
more interesting to read than morning papers. 
A certain friend of mine has a habit, he tells me, 
of reading the daily paper standing up, so that 
he wont lose time over it. It is a good habit, 
worth cultivating. As it is, you got to your office 
with the wrong sort of a tired feeling, the feeling 
that is born of insufficient sleep — you were up 
late the night before, you know ; and I was not 
able then to drive you to bed. In addition, you 
had twenty minutes of the bad air of the street 
car ; and you started your labor when you started 
that paper. You had already been working for 
yourself before you began to work for your em- 
ployer; so you did not, therefore, give him what 
he was paying you for— the fine fresh hours of 
the day. 
It was really only a symptom, that noise. You 



16 LETTERS TO JACK 

are not yet old enough to have gotten over tb 
habit. A boy who makes a noise around the housi 
is a healthy boy; but you are just on the verge o 
manhood. The noisy boy is a delight. The nois; 
man is a nuisance. Nobody wants to have a nois; 
man around, because he isn't natural. There i 
something of the cheat about a noisy man. Hi 
is like a shouting mob that hasn't anything realh 
back of it but excitement. His good nature is to< 
often assumed. He is afraid people will get t< 
know him as he is, so he shouts to keep some on< 
from asking questions which he cannot answei 
At twenty it is wise already to have passed tw< 
years trying to eliminate a boyish disposition, s< 
that, when you begin the life of business, you wil 
have learned something of the gentle art that j 
certain statesman calls " pussyfooting". I d< 
not, however, quite counsel that. The Latins sa; 
"In medio stat virtus", which, by enlargement 
means that in moderation is good sense. It is i 
wise saying. I had a friend, a bachelor, wh< 
hired a Japanese servant. The Jap stayed abou 
one month and was then incontinently fired. Nov 
the Jap was a good cook and a good valet, so " 
asked my friend why he had let him go. H< 
answered : "Because I became afraid of him. " 
never knew out of what dark corner he woulc 
glide at a most unexpected time. He had feet like 
a cat, and eyes that didn't show in the dark. H< 



NOISE 17 

got on my nerves. I wanted a little noise to re- 
lieve the monotony — so there you are." The les- 
son from both extremes is : don't be noisy enough 
to make people think you are not genuine ; but 
don't be quiet enough to make them think you 
are a nonentity or afraid. Don't shout ; but then 
don't whisper. Don't talk all the time ; but then 
don't be silent. Come down stairs as if the stairs 
were intended to be walked on, not pounded ; but 
come down as if you were walking on stairs, not 
air. Don't shout "good morning" from another 
room ; but come in and say it as if you meant it. 
Give yourself time to dress, and learn the pleas- 
ure of walking and observing as you walk. Form 
the habit. It is worth while. I wish I had formed 
it when I was your age. 

But this noise question is bigger still. The 
average boy who is working for success, says that 
he is " going to make a noise in the world ' '. Now 
get it out of your mind, my dear Jack, that the 
man who makes a noise in the world is successful. 
He isn't. The biggest noise is usually made by 
the biggest criminal. It is easy enough to make 
a noise, if you care only for the fact of it. The 
man who starts out with the idea that success con- 
sists of having people notice him, or having his 
picture in the paper, often gets it through most 
devious ways ; and his noise is good neither for 
his fellows nor for himself. It ends sometimes 



18 LETTERS TO JACK 

by a choking sensation after dropping from a 
platform. 

There is another kind of noise often coupled 
with the idea of success. It is the noise of simple 
failure. It is much like the noise you made this 
morning. You hear the rumble of it and then the 
thud that ends it. It isn't good for anybody, but 
we all have to notice it. The thud is the failure ; 
for, mark you, the biggest noise is often, made 
by the biggest failure. There is no thud at the 
end of the pleasing noise that is made by a suc- 
cessful man. It begins small and it grows. Its 
volume increases, but it is musical and pleasant, 
even at its height. It doesn't end even when the 
man dies. It merely begins to soften, and then 
melts away rather than ends. How long it takes 
thus to melt away, depends upon the measure of 
success that the individual who was responsible 
for it has had. That's the kind of a noise to 
make in the world, and you can make it if you 
want to. Let me tell you how. 

You begin at the simplest thing possible — 
opening your eyes in the morning at a fixed hour. 
When they are open they stay open. You waste 
no time in being alive. You master yourself by 
not closing them to take another nap. In other 
words, you begin your day with a victory, and 
thus you help to cultivate a will. You get out of 
your bed after an offering of the day to your 



NOISE 19 

Maker, and so He has the first moment to Him- 
self. You dress like a gentleman, not because 
your clothes are tailor-made and of fine cloth, but 
because you see that they hang right and are 
clean. You hurry through nothing, even your 
morning plunge. You put "snap" into your 
dressing. You take the measure of your own 
weaknesses, and therefore of yourself, by an act 
of humility. You get down on your knees to the 
One Who alone is Great. You have a cordial 
smile for every one you meet in the morning, 
particularly for those who wait on you; since 
you, like myself, like my superiors, and like their 
superiors, and then like their superiors, are ser- 
vants. We must all of us serve ; and service is 
honorable. Since you have a heart, every servant 
has a heart and kindness reaches it. I would 
rather, my dear Jack, be loved by those who serve 
me than by those whom I serve. There is a priest 
of my acquaintance who once said: "Mine has 
been a strange fate. Every one under me loves 
me ; every one of my equals is suspicious of me ; 
but my superiors all seem to dislike me." I said 
to him: "You are a successful man. If your 
superiors seem to dislike you, perhaps it is be- 
cause you are too big for them. If your equals 
are suspicious of you, perhaps it is because they 
envy you. But if those who serve you love you, 
it proves that you are good." 



20 LETTERS TO JACK 

When you leave the house you will remember 
that God made the sun for you, and that the grass 
and trees bloom for you. Part of your inherit- 
ance is the glory of nature that is around you. 
If you do not enjoy that inheritance, you are los- 
ing one of the finest things in life. The people 
you meet are destined to educate you; you may 
read the lessons in their morning faces. You 
thank God for His care of you when you see how 
much better off you are, or think you are, than 
others. In the luxurious motor cars that glide 
past you, you have an incentive to work. You 
have good health offered as you inhale the fresh 
air and exercise your limbs. When you enter 
your office, your geniality will make others genial, 
others who may not have taken advantage of 
the things around them as you have. You will 
remember that you have only two commodities to 
sell — your brains and your hands. These your 
employer bought for the space of eight hours. 
He owns them. You made a contract with him as 
binding as a mortgage or a sale. It has not been 
registered in the public records, but it is regis- 
tered in your conscience, and therefore before 
God. You give to your employer's work exactly 
the same attention that he gives to superintend- 
ing it; it makes no difference that he earns 
twenty-five thousand a year, and you earn only 
twenty-five dollars a week. He took you when 



NOISE 21 

you were not worth even that ; and he came up, 
just as you will come up, by giving an honest 
measure of attention and time to little things. 
Your first noise will be made in that office, and it 
may not be much of a noise. But it will grow 
slowly and surely, until someone hears it; and 
then you will have taken the first step upward. 
That's the noise that is worth while. 

Now to sum up. Each day that you begin is 
like the life that you begin, at twenty. If you 
begin right, you will end right. If you plant good 
seeds, good things will grow. If you begin by 
being thoughtful, you will end by being thought- 
ful. If you begin with God, you will end with 
God. 



\ 



II 

RELIGION 

The strongest willed people in the world were 
saints; and the happiest and sanest people in the 
world were saints. 



To live a good example is to do a double good. 



Nothing is little that is done for God's honor 
and glory. 



EELIGION 

My dear Jack: 

In yesterday's letter I mentioned two things 
that gave me an idea as to what I should write 
today. One you will find in this quotation : ' \ You 
begin at the simplest thing possible — opening 
your eyes in the morning at a fixed hour. When 
they are open they stay open. You waste no time 
in being alive. You master yourself by not clos- 
ing them to take another nap. In other words, 
you begin your day with a victory, and thus you 
help the cultivation of a will. ' ' The other follows 
immediately: "You get out of your bed after 
an offering of the day to your Maker, and so 
He has the first moment to Himself." 

I have always had an idea that the thing lack- 
ing in most young men who are striving to make 
a noise in the world is the cultivation of the will. 
A few weeks ago I was delighted to read a book 
on that very subject by a Father Barrett, an Irish 
Jesuit I believe, who seems to have made a special 
study of the will. In it I found all my poor ideas 
admirably expressed, and better ones in addition. 
By all means, get that book and read it. It will 
do you a world of good ; and, if he again writes 

25 



26 LETTERS TO JACK 

something on the same subject, follow him up. 
He knows what he is talking about. Father Bar- 
rett suggests a certain number of exercises for 
the cultivation of the will which doubtless are of 
great value; but you must remember that he is 
addressing a very general audience. If he were 
addressing his brothers in religion, he would 
probably suggest the Exercises of St. Ignatius. 
If he were addressing an audience of Catholic 
young men, he could easily and admirably sum up 
what he has to say by telling them to cultivate 
practices of religion. The best treatise on the 
cultivation of the will is the best treatise on the 
cultivation of a spiritual life. The strongest 
willed men in the world were saints ; and the hap- 
piest and sanest people in the world were saints. 
There are many saints who were never canonized. 
The reason is that the average saint first learned 
how to conceal from the world the fact that he 
was a saint. The only canonized saints are those 
who were discovered; and the fact that they 
were discovered was always their greatest 
annoyance. 

The best way to be a saint is to start on your 
path to sanctity with the greatest possible secrecy. 
Keep it dark — as dark as you can. Of course, 
it is true that we are told on extremely compe- 
tent authority that we must not hide our light 
under a bushel ; in other words, we are expected 



RELIGION 27 

to give a good example. But a saint does not 
have to worry about that ; for, the more he tries 
to conceal his light, the sooner will his good exam- 
ple be noticed and the effect follow. The most 
effective good example does not come from 
shouted prayers. When I was a boy in the old 
Cathedral, where you followed me as a chorister, 
there was one man whose voice was always heard 
over all others in the answers to the Rosary. In 
my youth I was simple enough to think he was 
a saint. When I grew up, I knew that he was a 
little of an oddity. No grown-up person ever mis- 
takes eccentricity for sanctity ; and one thing you 
will discover very soon is the fact that the aver- 
age man is suspicious of the neighbor whose 
religion is too much on his lips. 

To begin to cultivate religion in a quiet, secret 
way is to start work on the little things. If you 
do not close your eyes to take another nap in the 
morning because you know that God wants you 
to cultivate being alive, and because He does not 
want you to acquire habits of self-indulgence and 
sloth, it is an act of religion that is, at the same 
time, a cultivation of the will. It is a splendidly 
good way to begin a day. If you get out of bed 
while your eyes are heavy with sleep because it is 
your religious duty to do so, you make it easy to 
get out of bed. There is no satisfaction like the 
satisfaction of having done a little thing right, 



28 LETTERS TO JACK 

but nothing is little that is done for God's honor 
and glory. 

When you start a day right, it is easy to keep 
it right. You may be in a hurry, but your morn- 
ing prayers do not take up much time; and if 
you get into the habit of missing them you are 
losing, not only the spiritual benefit of the 
prayers, but also the benefit that comes from the 
cultivation of your will. You are losing, too, the 
little act of humility that is so powerful in put- 
ting you where you belong and keeping you there. 
You are losing the force that holds you to your 
work when you really do not care to work. You 
have stumbled on the first step that leads to the 
vague thing which men call Success. The fact 
that you were weak in the morning when you 
stood in the presence of God will weaken you all 
day when you must stand in the presence of men. 
If you fail to do a simple little thing for your 
Maker, how can you expect to do other worth 
while things for the sake of filthy lucre? 

Now I know, Jack, just as well as you do, that 
religion isn't popular in the world; and I am 
going to say an astonishing thing: what passes 
in that same world for " religion" is not particu- 
larly popular with priests. Priests know, better 
than other people, what it is that passes for re- 
ligion in a great many men — loud-voiced procla- 
mations, assurances that one has it, efforts to in- 



RELIGION 29 

fluence in business or politics through it, a self- 
righteous manner that implies a scorn for others. 
This is the sort of thing that parades as religion, • 
but it is not religion; and there is no one who 
hates that sort of thing more than the average 
priest, because he sees through the sham. 

Again going back to my boyhood days, I re- 
member well a family of two, man and wife, 
whose names I never knew and do not know to 
this day. That man and his wife impressed me 
more than any others in the great Cathedral par- 
ish, where we had a governor, some judges, and 
the nearest approach to a millionaire in the whole 
country. This man and his wife were not mil- 
lionaires, nor did they hold any great offices. He 
was just a clean, upstanding, rather good-looking 
and very quiet man. She seemed to fit his com- 
panionship, and that's all I can say about her. 
She belonged to him and he belonged to her. I 
never spoke a word to either of them ; but Sunday 
after Sunday, at the same hour precisely, they 
took their seats in a pew near my father's. Month 
after month, I saw them go to Communion to- 
gether. If I went to a gathering of any kind 
amongst the parishioners, I looked around to see 
if they were there ; and if they were not, I seemed 
to have some sort of a suspicion that the gather- 
ing was not an entire success. I once had charge 
of a concert given by the choir boys. All the lads 



30 LETTERS TO JACK 

except myself sold tickets for it. I had the man- 
agement and was freed from the duty of ringing 
doorbells. But for weeks I would find myself 
wondering if the concert was going to be a suc- 
cess, and somehow in my mind letting it depend 
upon whether or not that couple came to it. I 
stood at the door of the hall on the night of the 
concert. My man and woman appeared, and I 
then and there handed over the tickets to another 
boy. It was time for the concert to begin ; they 
had arrived. Mark you, Jack, I was not worry- 
ing about the governor, or the judges, or the 
so-called millionaire, though I respected them 
all. The people I was looking for were just the 
plain simple people I had picked as the best. 

Now what was it that made me think these peo- 
ple were really the most important in the parish? 
As a matter of fact, they were not, taking them 
as merely two individuals or one family. But in 
the aggregate they were the most important. The 
parish depended, not upon its few influential and 
wealthy people, but upon the many who were like 
these — clean, honest, unpretentious, quietly good, 
and faithful to every obligation. They repre- 
sented a type. More than that, the whole Church, 
under God, depends upon such people ; the whole 
country depends upon them even more ; and, mak- 
ing things still stronger, the whole world depends 
upon them. The other day, I was reading a book 



RELIGION 31 

on Mexico, written by a lady who had lived for 
a long time in Mexico City. I stopped to think 
over two remarks. One is a quotation made 
from General Huerta, who said : ' ' Mexico is like 
a snake. All its life is in its head. I am the 
head." The other is from herself: "How can a 
nation be successful that depends only upon the 
extremes?" 

The General was wrong and the lady was right. 
No nation depends upon its head. It depends 
upon its heart and its stomach, since it is from 
the stomach whence comes the strength that feeds 
the brain, and it is the heart that feeds the blood 
coursing through all. People such as those I 
admired are the heart and stomach, not only of 
nations, but of the world. I would rather see you 
succeed in making people look for you as these 
people made me look for them, than that you 
should become a millionaire. 

When an athlete starts to run a race, the things 
that count are his muscles and his wind. For a 
long time he was preparing in quiet to strengthen 
both of these necessities. But in the race he for- 
gets his training. He does not have to think 
about it. That's about the way it is, Jack, with 
regard to religion. The thing is, to be what re- 
ligious training makes us; and everybody will 
know we are trained without telling them. It is 
the consequences of religion that a man should 



32 LETTERS TO JACK 

have. It is the consequences of religion that the 
world should chiefly see. I once met a man who 
was a very ardent admirer of the Catholic Church, 
but he was not a member of it. During his con- 
versation with me I learned that he knew prac- 
tically nothing about it ; and so I asked him, out 
of curiosity, how he had become so enthusiastic. 
To my utter astonishment, he told me the reason 
why he admired the Catholic Church was, because 
every Sunday morning at half past five he was 
awakened by the tramp of hundreds of feet pass- 
ing his open window, rain or shine, hot or cold, 
on their way to six o'clock Mass. "The Catholic 
Church," he said, "is the only Church that can 
make people do that. I acknowledge the sacri- 
fice of my Sunday morning's sleep is too much to 
ask of me. The fact that the Catholic Church 
asks it of her children and gets it, is a testimony 
to her that I cannot ignore." Now this was a 
very little thing, but, as I said to you before, it is 
the little things that count. 

To live a good example is to do a double good. 
It is to bless yourself and to bless others. The 
real preachers of religion are not those who de- 
liver sermons, but the people who go out and 
preach the same sermons by their daily lives. 
Every time I preach I feel very humble when I 
look at the congregation; for there is a certain 
exhilaration to preaching, a sort of a glow that 



RELIGION 33 

makes one feel he is accomplishing something. 
But the faces of the people looking up at me, 
devotion written on them, bring the humility to 
me at once ; for these are the people. Jack, who 
are going to carry the gospel in its lessons out 
into the great wide world, and make it practical. 
These are the people who are going to use the 
lessons for the good of the world. It is through 
these people that the gospel will regenerate the 
world. After all, the last word is not with me, 
the priest ; it is with you, the layman. 

Of course, you know that before a priest is 
ordained he must make a retreat ; in other words, 
he must give a period of time to meditation upon 
his responsibilities and his duties. I often think 
that retreats for laymen, especially for young 
laymen, are more necessary than for priests. If 
you could understand what depends upon laymen, 
not only for eternity but also for time ! If lay- 
men could only for a little while brush aside the 
veil the world draws before their eyes, and see 
unclouded the opportunities lying ahead of them ! 
I am sad to-day as I write this letter, for I am 
snatching minutes to read that story of Mexico's 
tragic hour, to which I have already referred. 
It is the story of a nation whose leaders forgot 
God, whose great men thought they no longer 
needed Him, who believed that religion was for 
women and that men were too strong for it. And 



34 LETTERS TO JACK 

behold, the star of their country's destiny is 
drowned in an ocean of blood. It will be the same 
with us, Jack, if those who are just reaching their 
majority loose the grip that faith has on them. 
Some old emperor said: "If justice should be 
driven from the earth, it would find its last ref- 
uge in the hearts of kings." He was mistaken. 
Its last refuge will be where it should be, in the 
hearts of the faithful poor. But I am not mis- 
taken when I say to you, that if religion is ever 
driven out of our country, its last hope and its 
strongest hope must be in the hearts of Catholic 
men. When Catholic manhood loses religion the 
nation is irretrievably lost. 

You will find that youth is inclined to scoff in 
these days. Very often you will find that you 
must cultivate your will by resisting with it the 
thought of scoffing, for you cannot always avoid 
the companionship of the foolish. If you had a 
" pearl of great price" you would treasure it be- 
yond measure. You have a stone more precious 
than pearls in the faith that was handed down to 
you. Guard it for what it is worth, and that 
means — guard it above every other possession. 
It has more to do with that vaguely defined suc- 
cess than you dream of ; for success is not what 
men think it is, but what Cod thinks it is. 

Eeligion, and the keeping of it in life, is the 
simplest of all life's processes. It means only 



RELIGION 35 

fidelity to the little things ; the doing well of what 
is not very hard to do, and what takes so little 
time to do properly ; the raising of the heart to 
God in the midst of temptations if only for an 
instant ; the murmur of a secret prayer when no 
one seems to want to believe ; fidelity to the virtue 
of humility when everything beckons one to 
pride. Out of these little things steps forth an 
honest man, the noblest work of the grace of God. 



Ill 

LIVING 

We go about learning how to live and begin at the 
wrong end. We ought first to learn how to die. 



LIVING 

My dear Jack: 

I saw a book in your hands yesterday on "The 
Art of Living Long". I understand that you are 
considering the idea of pushing its sale through 
your department. If you decide to do so I com- 
mend your judgment. The title will carry the 
first effort to success ; and the contents, through 
which I glanced, will sustain it. Men like to read 
such books, for they want to live a long time. 
They would succeed in doing that if they followed 
the book's counsels; which, in spite of the fact 
that they chiefly concern themselves with the 
question of diet, yet get down to the fundamental 
Christian rule for longevity — self-restraint and 
sacrifice. The monks taught the "Art of Living 
Long" before Louis Cornaro was born. But the 
best sort of a book on the subject would not bother 
about diet at all. It would be called, How to Die. 

"The Imitation of Christ" is, perhaps, the 
most wonderful and comforting of all uninspired, 
or doubtfully inspired, books that ever were 
penned. It is comforting to the busy man who 
has learned to know it, because it tells so much 
about the art of living. But have you not no- 

39 



40 LETTERS TO JACK 

ticed that that part of it is quite accidental ? Its 
aims and purposes are plainly to teach people 
how to die. 

The happiest folk I ever saw were some clois- 
tered nuns in a small Quebec village. They fairly 
radiated happiness, though they were enclosed, 
by their own free will, and confined to their house 
and garden. By special permission, I was shown 
their cells. They were clean, white rooms, with- 
out ornaments or pictures. There was always a 
cot, one chair, a table and a kneeling bench. On 
the kneeling bench, where the eye naturally fell 
when dropped in prayer, was painted an ugly 
black coffin. I wondered for a little while, until 
I began to understand that these nuns were 
happy because, through having learned the art of 
dying, they had learned the art of living. They 
worked with their hands, and produced beautiful 
things which were useful to the world ; but they 
worked also with their spiritual hands, and pro- 
duced more beautiful things, useful to themselves, 
and thus learned the art of dying. .Their great 
business and their greatest happiness was in 
learning how to die. 

When you think about it, it is not so hard a les- 
son to learn, once men try to learn it. There is 
a whole library of good things in one text of 
Scripture which everybody knows but so few 
think about : ' ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God 



LIVING 41 

and His justice and all else shall be added unto 
you." This is practically an admission that we 
need not go about learning how to live. We begin 
at the wrong end. We ought first to learn how to 
die. If we make the world everything, fight for 
everything in it and win, we are only making the 
dying harder. It is not business to do that. No 
commercial man, when laying his plans, would 
ignore an event which he knows must be faced, 
for he is not a fool. He foresees, and plans ac- 
cording to his foresight; and that explains his 
success. But, strange to say, the same man 
ignores a greater and surer eventuality, which 
means, so far as he can see, the loss of all that he 
has gained, and perhaps his beginning all over 
again under conditions he has never tried to 
understand. 

Eeligion is rejected by too many business men, 
men of the type of the age, because they think it 
is a gloomy thing and gives them no information 
about what is to them the great question — how to 
live. In reality religion is the one thing they 
need, because it, alone, can teach them the essen- 
tial lesson of living, by teaching them how to die. 



IV 

TEMPTATION 

I never knew anyone who had u humanly rea- 
soned " himself off the path of evil; or who had 
really overcome dangerous temptations, merely 
because they interfered with his temporal success. 



TEMPTATION 
My dear Jack: 

I never knew anyone who had "humanly rea- 
soned" himself off the path of evil; or who had 
really overcome dangerous temptations, merely 
because they interfered with his temporal suc- 
cess. I have heard doctors lecture to young men 
on the horrible consequences of a life spent in 
yielding to lust or gluttony. I have known young 
men to give up evil ways for health's sake, or 
for the sake of prosperity ; but I also knew that 
they did not entirely give them up. Those who 
are strong enough to be moderate for worldly rea- 
sons are wise enough to know that moderation 
avoids nine-tenths of the physical dangers, and 
are willing enough to chance the other tenth. 
There is only one way to face temptation with 
any hope of success against it; and that is the 
Christian way. Let me explain it. 

There is a great palace which is called Life 
and, by the grace of God, we are all in it as resi- 
dents. The King dwells in the palace, but our 
corporal eyes never see Him. We only know 
that He is under the same roof with us. You 
have entered houses that spoke most eloquently 

45 



46 LETTERS TO r JACK 

of their owners, though you did not see the own- 
ers at all. Something about the rooms, the fur- 
nishings, the books, the pictures, the order or the 
disorder, told you the owner had left himself 
there even when absent in body. In this great 
palace you see and note the same thing, only the 
wonder of its Owner's power to be there and yet 
not be seen is infinitely greater. He permeates 
everything about you with His unseen presence. 
He vivifies and beautifies and inspires, till you 
ask yourself, " What am I here for?" and receive 
the answer before it is corroborated by your fel- 
low-residents. You are in the palace to serve the 
King. You have no other purpose in it ; but by 
this service you are made happy and contented. 
You do not think of pay, yet you know that your 
pay will be dealt out to you with lavish generosity. 
In gardens around the palace multitudes play 
constantly, but stop often to weep and gaze upon 
the buildings. The gardens are splendid; but 
you know that the fruits are beautiful only to 
the sight — at a touch they fall to ashes. The 
flowers have beauty, too, but no perfume. The 
multitude calls to you from the ground, as you 
now and then look out of the windows. They 
ask you to come out and pluck the fruit and 
stroll amongst the odorless flowers; and some- 
times you long to go. They call to you that you 
have a duty of mercy or charity to come. You 



TEMPTATION 47 

shut out the thought of the Presence sometimes 
and go. 

But your place is in the King's service. His 
call may come at any time, and woe to you if then 
you are absent; for the door may be closed 
against you, and your strength, which comes from 
the Presence, will be too much weakened to en- 
able you to enter again. 

It is better for you to keep within and to call 
those outside to come to you; for any of that 
great multitude may enter and join you. If they 
do come there is great rejoicing in the palace, and 
a deep peace and satisfaction in your heart for 
the gaining of other servants for the King. 

There are things in the palace, inanimate and 
animate, that you may use for your comfort, your 
convenience and your pleasure. There are things 
in the gardens below, or in the distance, upon 
which you may feast your eyes to satiety. But 
you know that all these things serve but one pur- 
pose — to help you serve the King better. Shall 
you use them ? Yes, as far as they promote good 
service. No, as far as they take you from that 
service. To use these things as far as they pro- 
mote the service you are to render the King, is 
wise and good. To use them when they hinder, is 
to succumb to temptation and fall from grace; 
then the Presence seems to be less felt, and you 
languish in your vigilance for the King's call. 



48 LETTERS TO JACK 

I have never known, my dear Jack, a better 
way " to avoid evil and do good" than to keep this 
picture before my mind. Father Diertens sums 
it up splendidly: " All other things on the face of 
the earth are created for man and that they may 
help him in the end for which he was created. 
From this it follows that man is to use them as 
much as they help him to his end, and ought to 
rid himself of them as far as they hinder him 
as to it." 

There you are. To overcome temptations, re- 
member the palace and the Presence, the win- 
dows looking out on the fruit that is ashes and 
the flowers without perfume, the voices that call, 
the doors that can be opened only by spiritual 
strength, the service that you must give, and the 
call that will surely come to the Chamber of the 
King. Learn that all things about you are yours, 
and feel your freedom to use them ; but ask your 
soul the question, " Are they going to promote my 
efficiency as a servant of God, or hinder it?" 

This, with humility, is the best means of over- 
coming temptations. 



V 
THINKING 

Meditation in its best form is like talking to God 
with the tongue of the spirit and hearing Him 
answer with the ears of the soul. 



Bring thought to your problems and see them 
vanish. 



As serious men become older they grow to dislike 
crowds. 



THINKING 

My dear Jack: 

You have heard me speak before, in an in- 
cidental way, of meditation ; and you knew that 
it referred to some exercise of piety common to 
priests. I do not think you know much more 
than that about it. It is an exercise which, 
however, is known to others besides priests; 
and happy is the man or woman who not only 
knows of it, but practices it daily. Meditation 
is simply prayer without words, prayer of the 
soul and mind and heart. In its best form it is 
like talking to God with the tongue of the spirit, 
and hearing Him answer with the ears of the 
soul. It is spiritual training. It is filled with con- 
solations unknown to those who never practice 
it. At its poorest it is the highest form of prayer, 
but at its best it is a foretaste of heaven's joy. 
To those who try it, even in the crudest way, 
it is full of rewards. To those who let themselves 
be led by its beauties, it has ended in visions that 
themselves are only the beginnings of visions. 
No, I am not in the clouds. The best thing about 
meditation is that, while it sends the soul ex- 
ploring the heavens, those who feed on it are the 

51 



52 LETTERS TO 'JACK 

sanest and most sensible of men. My follies are 
at their greatest when I neglect my meditation. 

Now, meditation has not only a spiritual and 
religious lesson to teach, but a worldly one as 
well. The way to goodness is through the flower- 
bordered path of meditation. The way to worldly 
success is through the pleasant path of thought. 
Bring thought to your problems and see them 
vanish. 

The greatest evil of the age, my dear Jack, 
is thoughtlessness. I could almost say that we 
live in an age when nobody thinks. We seem to 
be too busy to think ; but he who is too busy to 
think is too thoughtless to succeed. Let me bring 
the point home to you. Every day you are at 
your desk from early morning till evening. After 
the evening meal you want pleasure, or think you 
do. As a matter of fact, you only need relaxa- 
tion. Play rests the mind by changing the cur- 
rent of thought, not by stopping it. Too much 
play, however, does stop it. If you merely work 
and play you will get nowhere. Some sailors do 
that ; but those who ambition to become masters, 
do not. There must be someone on every ship to 
think out the problems of the voyage. The sailor 
who learns to work, play and think is the sailor 
who, later on, will command. Every young man 
is a young captain of his fortunes. He is either 
going to bring his boat safely into port laden 



THINKING 53 

with a precious cargo, or he is going to pile it 
up on the rocks. Cargoes may vary, but a real 
cargo and a real port mean success. Every day 
of the voyage is a day that has its problems. So 
every day should have one bit of it given up to 
the solving of them — to thought. 

Do I mean that every young man should de- 
liberately sit down every day and do nothing? 
No. I mean that every young man should de- 
liberately sit down every day and think. If he 
really is interested in his work he will not find 
it difficult to think for, say, a half hour. If he is 
not interested in his work he should still think 
and plan — and get interested; for that is just 
what his thinking and planning will do for him. 

Harriman had his railroad kingdom in his 
thoughts long before he got the Union Pacific, 
the key to his greatness. Pullman was carry- 
ing thousands in his sleepers, long before he 
could sleep himself, with the assurance that 
many men were working out his small problems. 
Rockefeller now, in his old age, may play golf 
all day, but only because he never played in the 
time set aside for thinking and planning, when 
he was young. If you want examples, you can 
have them in plenty ; but there is the Great Ex- 
ample, for the whole of creation was but the 
thought of God, supplemented by the Word of 
Power. Your future is in yourself. Every 



54 LETTERS TO JACK 

thoughtful moment is bringing it closer to you. 
Some day it will all be clear if you are faithful 
to thinking and planning. Then it is for you 
to imitate God, and speak the Word of Power 
He has placed in your mouth for utterance at 
the right time. 

You cannot think if you always use your leis- 
ure for "a good time". The head does not work 
well in concert with the feet, so you cannot think 
and dance together. Company is not an aid to 
thought, but solitude is. Tour room ought to be 
more than a place in which to sleep. It ought 
also to be a hermit's cell, for at least a little while 
every day. 

Do not imagine that you lose the time you give 
to yourself alone. Too many young people think 
that they must be in a crowd or they are losing 
something of what they call "life". They are 
really losing all that is worth while in life when 
they are in a crowd. The only inspiration that 
is in a crowd is for an orator, but then it is a 
case of thought joining thought. A man who lis- 
tens and drinks in a discourse is as much alone 
as if he were locked in a solitary cell. The magic 
touch of oratory is in so moving people as to 
make them forget the speaker in the thoughts he 
inspires. The magic of a crowd on a speaker is 
in the communication of the sympathy of their 
individual thoughts with his own. The only 



THINKING 55 

crowd worth getting into is the crowd that lis- 
tens or prays, which sometimes amounts to about 
the same thing. As serious men become older 
they grow to dislike crowds. A growing love for 
being in a crowd is not a sign of perennial youth. 
It is more often the sign of a shallow mind. 
Sometimes, alas, it is the sign of a depraved 
heart. 

Do not imagine that to be alone with your 
thoughts is really to be lonely. A certain poet 
put the case well when he said : "Alone, but yet 
not lonely." You can make your thoughts very 
friendly, as well as the pleasantest of company ; 
and the best of it is that such company grows 
better as you intensify your associations with it. 
The man who said that he liked to talk to him- 
self because he " liked to talk to a good man, and 
liked to hear a good man talk," was perhaps try- 
ing to be funny, but, like Mr. Dooley, he suc- 
ceeded in being a philosopher. Thinking is 
really talking to your better self. You can al- 
ways talk better and straighter to yourself than 
to anyone else, because you have more freedom. 
The restraints of human respect are removed. 
You are not suspicious of motives. You can test 
and weigh without fear or favor, and, if you 
practice proper humility, without undue affec- 
tion. 

The greatest poems never made me love them 



56 LETTERS TO SACK 

(and you know how I do love poetry) half as 
much as Father Ryan's "Song of the Mystic", 
which begins : 



"I walk down the valley of Silence, 
Down the dim, voiceless Valley — alone. 



>> 



This verse of it keeps coming back to me as I 
write : 

"And I have had thoughts in the valley, 
Ah me, how my spirit was stirred! 
And they wear holy veils on their faces, 
Their footsteps can scarcely he heard. 
They float down the Valley like virgins, 
Too pure for the touch of a word: 



>> 



Of course, again all my hopes for writing a 
real practical business letter have fled long ago. 
I try and try not to preach, and only succeed in 
preaching the more. Well, perhaps after all it 
is for the best. 



VI 

FRIENDS 

If I were a saint, I should be more afraid of flat- 
tery than of anything else ; and, because I am not 
a saint, I ought to fear it still more. 



No friendship will stand the shock of a sin. 



Be at least as much of a gentleman to your friend 
as you are to a stranger. 



FKIEKDS 

My Dear Jack: 

All friends are rare; wise friends are rarer; 
but foolish friends are worse than enemies. Fer- 
vently do I pray: "From my foolish friends, 
good Lord, deliver me." It sounds a little un- 
charitable that I should consider any of my 
friends foolish, but alas, I know that some of 
them are. The most foolish friend of all is the 
one who thinks that he has to overpraise in order 
to do his duty of friendship. Listen to him and 
you will think yourself a demigod, but no one 
else will. Because he overstates his case, he 
makes listeners doubt the actual truth. He drags 
your name into his conversations constantly. He 
basks in the sunlight of your supposed greatness ; 
but, in nine cases out of ten, he thinks that in 
this way he makes a little glory for himself. He 
is not a real friend of yours, but a very real 
friend of himself. You are the steps of the lad- 
der upon which he hopes to mount. One would 
not mind it, but that he insists on scraping the 
steps with his rough, hob-nailed shoes as he 
climbs, and that hurts. You must just live down 
this kind of a friend. It is hard to rebuke him ; 
indeed often he will not be rebuked. 

59 



60 LETTERS TO JACK 

Sometimes, however, you find this sort of a 
friend absolutely unselfish. He does not want 
to mount at your expense. He is only an enthu- 
siast about you. He thinks he has discovered 
virtues in you that nobody else suspects. He 
looks on himself merely as an humble admirer; 
but, though he doesn't know it, he is really swing- 
ing incense to his own astuteness. The less he 
understands of that, the harder it is to save your- 
self from him, for he sees no flaw in you. This 
man hurts you because he flatters you ; and flat- 
tery always hurts. If I were a saint, I should be 
more afraid of flattery than of anything else; 
and because I am not a saint, I ought to fear 
it still more. It is an insidious poison, and no 
armor of righteousness is strong enough to make 
you fearless of it. It strengthens your enemy 
because it makes you self-satisfied. It increases 
your pride, which is especially bad. It kills the 
humility that is your real strength. This kind 
of a friend, while not to be avoided, nevertheless 
is one to reason with. Do not let him flatter you. 
Have a heart-to heart talk with him, and own up 
to the truth. I knew two men who passed as 
friends so well that I had come to call them 
Damon and Pythias. Pythias seemed always lost 
in admiration for Damon. One day I met them 
together, but Damon was hopelessly drunk. Now 
both of these men were parishioners of mine, and 



FRIENDS 61 

I thought it was time for me to act. I called 
Damon aside and reproached him, adding to my 
scolding: "I never saw you in this condition 
before." He had sense enough to answer, wisely 
enough: "Yes, I am drunk and I know it; and 
more than that, Father, I am glad of it. That 
pest of a friend will now know that I am only a 
human being." I always suspected that Damon 
played drunk that day for a purpose. 

The real friend is the man who knows all about 
you and loves you in spite of it. I am sure some 
one must have said that before; but I do not 
know who it was or I would give him credit for 
it. Friendship is really founded on generosity. 
I am not a believer in the intimate "friendships" 
between men and women that are often called 
"platonic love." If such intimacies are platonic 
they may not be classed as love ; and if they may, 
why the adjective? I believe that friendships 
between men and women are almost always lack- 
ing in the essential of equality; for women are 
governed more by the heart than are men, and in 
friendship, therefore, are far more generous. 
Friendship will not, as a rule, stand the strain 
of great inequality. "Platonic love" either be- 
comes real love, or ends in a break. The truest 
friendships are between persons of the same sex ; 
and there is nothing of what is usually called 
i i love ' ' in them. The man who knows your faults 



62 LETTERS TO JACK 

and is still your friend overlooks a lot of 
defects. He, therefore, is generous; but, at the 
same time, he is humble, because he is thus con- 
fessing, in his own way, that he has some defects 
to be overlooked on your part. Do not conceal 
your defects from your friend. When you talk 
to him do not boast. Minimize your virtues ; but 
it is not wise to emphasize your faults too much. 
Let your friend know that you have faults. It 
makes the bond of union closer. The fellow who 
is always striking his breast is not safe, because 
he is not sincere. The publican in the parable 
only struck his breast and confessed his sins in 
the temple. Had he gone out and proclaimed 
them, he would have been as bad as the pharisee, 
though in another way. You may confess faults 
in the temple of friendship : but remember, that 
to be always disparaging yourself is to be seek- 
ing praise. To get down to the level of knowl- 
edge with your friend, and then find equality, is 
a pretty good way to make a friendship last. 

On general principles it can be asserted that 
there is no possibility of friendship between a 
superior and an inferior — between one who rules 
and one who is under his jurisdiction. A su- 
perior who has friends amongst his " subjects" 
is running the risk of violating justice toward 
those not thus honored. The nearest approach 
to friendship of that kind, so far as the superior 



FRIENDS 63 

is concerned, must be admiration and apprecia- 
tion. When an inferior has what people call 
friendship for his superior, it is usually devo- 
tion ; and it ought to be absolutely unselfish to be 
worth anything. The day may come when equal- 
ity will raise this devotion to the plane of real 
friendship ; but, until it does, the devotion ought 
to be whole-hearted, and rather for what the su- 
perior represents than for himself. Such devo- 
tion ought to ask nothing ; for if it demands spe- 
cial consideration it loses its virtue and is, there- 
fore, in danger of losing its utility. The best way 
to consider superiors is by thinking of them as 
not detached from their offices. He is a happy 
superior who makes those under him have re- 
gard and devotion for what he represents. Per- 
sonal friendships between superiors and those 
they govern provoke jealousies and misunder- 
standings; and so, in general, do not work out 
for good. 

Get it firmly fixed in your mind, Jack, that 
friendship never demands anything that is 
wrong. No friendship will stand the shock of 
a sin. The friend who asks you to lie for him, 
or to do some other wrong act for him, or to 
place your own position in jeopardy for him, is 
nothing more than a supposed friend. A busi- 
ness man in Detroit has a motto stuck over his 
desk that is more to be praised for its truth than 



64 LETTERS TO JACK 

its eloquence: "That which takes gall to ask, 
takes no gall to refuse." The man who places 
before you the suggestion, that because he is in 
trouble your friendship for him must be tested 
by the sacrifice of your honesty, ought to be put 
out of your life at once. If he is a true friend, 
he will admire the good in you and he will not 
attempt to destroy it. He should be willing to 
cut off his right hand rather than ask you to do 
wrong; and yet the whole business world of to- 
day is full of men who think that they have a 
right to demand, in the name of friendship, 
things that sully the soul. In the world of poli- 
tics this is especially true; and it is because of 
that fact that there are really no political friends ; 
or rather that a political friend is no friend at 
all. The man who happens to be a politician may 
have a man's friendship; but political friend- 
ships are based upon selfishness, pure and sim- 
ple; though the adjectives are misleading, for 
selfishness is neither pure nor simple. Selfish- 
ness is to the highest degree impure; and, far 
from being simple, it is as cunning as a serpent. 
You may often trust a politician in matters 
other than those that are political ; but in politics 
one should seldom trust him. You may trust a 
statesman in everything except statecraft; but 
the word " craft" has been well applied in this 
connection. A statesman is often only a post- 



FRIENDS 65 

graduate politician. An ecclesiastical friend is 
safe for your spiritual self ; but he is hard for a 
worldly man to understand. If he is worth any- 
thing to you it is because his motto is : " All for 
the greater glory of God." Unless you have that 
motto yourself, you cannot understand the eccle- 
siastical point of view. The things that you be- 
lieve are necessary the ecclesiastic very often puts 
down as " vanity and affliction of spirit". He is 
a safeguard, but unless he has many worldly 
faults, he is not capable of the friendship that a 
man of the world demands. He is too unbending. 
Friendships between the clergy and the laity are 
usually very imperfect, and are not particularly 
to be encouraged. Though you have one priest in 
your family, with a possibility of having more, 
yet, as a priest, I would not encourage you to 
form friendships with other priests. Their duty 
toward you is in the way of guidance and direc- 
tion. Your duty toward them is implied in the 
definition of their duty toward you. The founda- 
tion of equality is lacking in the friendship of a 
layman and a priest ; and hence such friendships 
very often are failures. The best way to deal 
with a priest is to appeal to the father in him. 
Do not then seek friends; because in seeking 
you rarely find them. You want them too badly, 
and in your eagerness you may buy shoddy in- 
stead of good cloth. Wait until they come into 



66 , LETTERS TO JACK 

your life unasked, and then consider well before 
you surrender. Look first for unselfishness ; but 
find out there and then if you are yourself capa- 
ble of it ; for you are an equal partner in friend- 
ship. You cannot expect what you cannot give. 
Study every possible friend as if he were a pos- 
sible enemy. See that he is as near your equal 
as he may be ; but try to think of him always as 
just a little superior to yourself. Be open and 
honest with him. Let him be open and honest 
with you. Never praise him to his face, and 
do not praise him unduly behind his back. 
If he has faults — and he surely has them — 
show them to him by calling attention to 
the same possible defects in your own charac- 
ter. He will see the point. Lean on him in 
your little weaknesses, but do not put your heavy 
burdens upon his shoulders. To lean lightly is 
to make him happy that you come to him in your 
troubles ; but to throw on him the heavy burdens 
that you should carry yourself, is to prove your 
own selfishness. Be at least as much of a gen- 
tleman to your friend as you are to a stranger. 
He has greater claims on you than any stranger. 
Ask nothing of him that you would not want him 
to ask of you; and thus you shall keep your 
friend, and in his friendship you shall find a 
great deal to help and sustain you. 



VII 
ENEMIES 

The way to change into friends the enemies who 
misunderstand, is to find out the way to tell 
them the truth; and one doesn't lose the time 
taken in scheming to that end. 



Enmity at bottom is a sin; and the only thing 
with which a sin can be successfully opposed is 
the opposite virtue. 



Cherish your enemies. 



ENEMIES 
My dear Jack: 

I have noticed that you are inclined to be popu- 
lar. The people you meet in my house like you. 
The people who have met you in the office say nice 
things about you. If I reach for my coat when 
you are around, you jump up to hold it for me. 
That isn't particularly complimentary to me, for 
I am not so very old, nor have I been accustomed 
to a valet around to make me think myself a 
petted child of fortune. But let that go. You 
have acquired a good habit in always trying to 
help other people. It is inevitable that, under 
such a system, you are bound to be popular ; but 
I would not have you close your eyes to the fact 
that, with popularity, you are also going to accu- 
mulate a few enemies. While great popularity 
reduces the number of our enemies, it surely 
makes very bitter ones ; for it appears to be half 
a law that the hands which stretch up from imme- 
diately beneath the pinnacle of success, are hands 
reaching for feet to pull down. You will have 
your enemies ; you may have incipient ones now. 
It is wise to begin already to think how you are 
to treat them. 

69 



70 LETTERS TO r JACK 

I had a chat once with a statesman possessing 
more enemies to the square inch than any other 
man I ever knew. He had just passed through a 
terrible ordeal and his enemies had almost beaten 
him. Amongst other things he said: " Revenge 
is not worth while. Your whole life is a proces- 
sion from birth to death, and the procession is a 
race. If somebody hurts you, you cannot afford 
to stop and wait for him to come around to strike 
back at him. If you do that the procession will 
have gone on while you are waiting, and you will 
be just that much behind." I was so interested 
in the views of this man that I watched his career. 
No one ever suffered so much from enemies ; but 
I never saw him try to strike back. A friend once 
said of him : "Why, the fool, he would compro- 
mise with his worst enemy." I would not have 
put it that way; I would have substituted "wise 
man" for "fool". An enemy who can be concil- 
iated hasn't any excuse for existing. Richelieu 
said that statesmanship is to make friends out of 
enemies; and Richelieu was right. Nine-tenths 
of my own enemies are people who misunder- 
stood, and thought that their enmity was for my 
good. Nearly all of the other tenth were people 
who, while they did not misunderstand, never- 
theless in a vague sort of way thought I had in- 
jured them. All of them were wrong. I never 
tried willfully to injure anybody in my life ; but, 



ENEMIES 71 

nevertheless, I may have been at fault, for some- 
times a man doesn't know when he is doing harm 
to another. The way to change into friends the 
enemies who misunderstand, is to find out the way 
to tell them the truth, and one doesn't lose the 
time taken in scheming to that end. The way 
to change into friends enemies who think they 
have been injured, is not by building up a case 
for yourself and remaining self -righteously stub- 
born; it is to take it for granted that you are 
wrong, whether you are or not. There is no bet- 
ter way of making an enemy realize that you are 
right. 

I can truthfully say, Jack, that if I have any 
enemies today, and doubtless I have, they are 
enemies I never met, or of whom I am blissfully 
ignorant. The people I might know later on 
as enemies will never find out from my conduct 
toward them that I acknowledge or notice their 
enmity. The best rule of life that I find for 
such situations is to ignore the fact that anyone 
dislikes you. 

Of course, sometimes this conduct does not 
seem to work out well, for a man who hates you 
sometimes will hate through everything. But 
what difference does it make, except that of 
momentary annoyance? The thing is to be at 
peace yourself, and you cannot be at peace with 
yourself if you must add, to the ordinary wor- 



72 LETTERS TO 'JACK 

ries of life, the extraordinary ones of plotting 
and planning how to circumvent an enemy. 
There is really only one way to circumvent him 
— the scriptural way of heaping coals of fire on 
his head. Enmity at bottom is a sin, and the only 
thing with which a sin can be successfully op- 
posed is the opposite virtue. 

A harder situation arises when you find a man 
dislikes you as a matter of duty. We all have 
superiors, and it is the superior's business to 
know those who are under his jurisdiction. He 
rarely gets his knowledge direct, for he has to 
depend upon others; and out of a multiplicity 
of opinions expressed to him, he draws his con- 
clusions, sometimes unconsciously. As he has 
power, these conclusions often work out to your 
undoing. The superior may think that he is 
eminently just, whereas he is disgracefully un- 
just. He may want to do right, but succeeds only 
in doing wrong. He may not consider the fact 
that no man looks upon his neighbor as quite per- 
fect, and that most of us, alas, will talk about 
imperfections rather than perfections. How are 
you going to handle such a case as that? The 
first rule, of course, is to see that your own con- 
duct squares with integrity and honesty, so that, 
if the charges are made against you openly, you 
may prove your innocence. That's what might 
be called preparation for the break, but with that 



ENEMIES 73 

preparation the open break is often averted. It 
is an uncomfortable feeling, that of being obliged 
to work under the power of a superior who sus- 
pects you and your motives, who is an enemy of 
the worst kind because an enemy through what 
he considers his duty. The rule to follow then 
is : never betray yourself into a resentment be- 
fore him or before others. Never criticise him 
or his actions. Never show pique because he does 
not like you. Praise him whenever you can; 
and, by the way, it will be easy to pick out things 
in the life of that sort of a man to praise, for he 
is usually honest. Help him even more cheer- 
fully than you help anyone else. Rise to every 
occasion that he puts in your way ; but, above all 
else, even if you have the power, do not try to 
injure him. You will be tempted to do so. The 
devil will put it into your power sometime to do 
so. The time may come when he is caught, and 
when a word from you may ruin him ; but that 
is the day of your trial, not Ms; that is the day 
your mettle is being tested ; that is the great oc- 
casion that God gives you for growth. Right 
there you have the chance to be a big man or a 
little man, to be a success before God or merely 
a human so-called success. You are there before 
the caskets, of which there are but two: one 
moth-eaten, cobweb-covered and ugly, because so 
few people ever touch it; the other gilded and 



74 LETTERS TO JACK 

jeweled, cleaned and garnished, because it is pop- 
ular. But in that last casket there is only re- 
proach and regret : while in the other is the prize 
of self-conquest, that admits you at once into 
the outer circle surrounding the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

The worst kind of enemy, the one hardest to 
deal with, is always the man who has already 
wronged you by act or thought. There is an old 
advice often given, and it comes in very apropos 
here, to the effect that one should never lend 
money to a friend — if one values the friend. Of 
course, like most bits of worldly philosophy, this 
is not always strictly true ; but it is true enough 
to make it a general rule of conduct. The man 
who has received a benefit from you, very often 
resents in his heart the fact that he was humil- 
iated by accepting it. At first it is only a 
resentment, but it has a strange and unreason- 
able growth that arrives often at hatred. Every 
time this man does something to actually injure 
you the hatred increases, and grows on its own 
unreason. There seems to be no remedy for this 
kind of enmity. New favors only add fuel to 
the flame, for they bring a return of resentment 
by giving hatred a fictitious justification. Such 
enmity goes very far to prove the doctrine of 
total depravity, whose only remedy was and is 
the grace of God; which, by the way, you need 



ENEMIES 75 

as much in facing the situation as your enemy 
does in shaking off his blinders. 

It takes your self-discipline, and all of it, to 
stand up under the feeling of rankling injustice 
that overflows your very soul, when you become 
conscious of this sort of unreasonable and ever- 
degrading enmity. Always fall back on the con- 
sciousness of eternal justice before the fact of 
human injustice; and then stand to your guns. 
Make the unreasonable enemy respect your firm- 
ness and the right of your position. Do not give 
such a man an inch. Demand from him your 
own — all your own ; not because you want it, but 
because you know it is good for him to restore it. 
He is entitled to no consideration from you ; but 
just the same have all consideration for him 
within the limits of reason, justice and charity. 
Take no more than is yours ; take that and — wait. 
When you are through with that sort of enemy 
be through with him forever and ever, so far as 
giving him a chance at you again is concerned; 
but do not forget that he remains one of a mul- 
titude for you, one out of thousands for whom 
you still ought to have kindly feelings, honest in- 
tentions, and overflowing charity. Just forget 
your trouble in all but the experience you have 
gotten out of it. It will pass, but it would never 
pass if you let it have its evil way. 

Enemies have their uses, for they make us 



76 LETTERS TO r JACK 

careful. They teach us how to govern ourselves. 
They show us how naturally unreasonable we 
might become if we permitted ourselves to go 
wrong. Cherish your enemies, Jack, since you 
must have them; for a strong and powerful 
enemy is often a help up the ladder, spiritually 
as well as temporally. 

To avoid making enemies one would have to 
avoid living at all. There is another old adage 
which says: "To avoid enemies, say nothing, do 
nothing, be nothing. ' ' This is unhappily only too 
true; yet though we cannot avoid enemies, the 
wise man always keeps trying to do so, and thus 
cuts down their number and their malignity. The 
best rule to follow in avoiding the making of ene- 
mies, is always to impute good motives to the 
acts of your neighbor. After all, we cannot read 
hearts; only God can do that. An old Scotch 
lady made it a rule to praise everybody. She dis- 
gusted an uncharitable neighbor once to the 
point of making him blurt out: " Ye auld hag, I 
think ye'd praise the deil himself." The old 
lady was not taken aback, but smilingly an- 
swered: "Aweel, he is a vera industrious body." 
I would not have you arrive at the point where 
you could find something to praise in the devil ; 
but, except for the devil, you can imagine a good 
motive to nearly every act that is not a sin. Even 
that you can leave to God. There is always an 



ENEMIES 77 

excuse ; there is always an explanation ; there is 
always the chance of good intentions; there is 
always a weakness; there is always something 
you can pick up to explain. When you do that, 
you never know how far your words go. I met 
a certain man once, and never thought of him 
afterwards until he forced me to do so. He said 
a nice thing about me to some one else, when 
there really was no call for him to say it. He 
had no obligation toward me. I had never done 
him a favor. I had merely shaken hands with 
him. once and chatted for two or three minutes ; 
but when the chance came he went out of his way 
to say the thing that helped me. Now, I am 
watching my opportunity to say good things 
about him. It is by practising charity in thought, 
word and deed that you avoid making enemies 
and succeed in making friends. 



VIII 
RULE AND SERVICE 

The strong man is the man who feels his respon- 
sibility and accepts it in the spirit of humility. 



The wisest ruler is he who gives the fewest orders 
but looks for the greatest results. 



No man can be just and selfish at the same time. 



EULE AND SERVICE 

My dear Jack: 

It has been said that "no one has learned how 
to rule until he has learned how to serve". • The 
statement is quite true, quite smart and quite 
catchy; but I like to express it in another way. 
I believe that no one has learned how to serve 
until he has learned how to rule. If you analyze 
the two statements you will find that they really 
amount to the same thing. Everybody is called 
upon to rule, and everybody is called upon to 
serve. You do the one only as well as you do the 
other. When a king, for example, ceases to serve 
his people well, he ceases to rule them well, and 
vice versa. Every man, woman and child born 
into this world is destined to rule. We are all 
destined, for example, to rule ourselves. If we 
fail in that, the depravity in us gets the upper 
hand, and there is nothing left in life. Every 
task you set out to do gives you the opportunity 
of ruling; and as you rule you serve. There is 
no such thing as an absolute ruler in this world, 
for even the monarch most unlimited in his 
powers is ruled by some elements in the things 

81 



82 LETTERS TO JACK 

that lie believes he is ruling. It is said that the 
Czar of Russia is the most absolute of all rulers ; 
but the Czar himself knows that there are a thou- 
sand things he cannot do, and therefore that 
there are a thousand things and conditions that 
rule him. If you do well the work that is put 
under your hands to do, the work for which you 
are responsible, you are ruling much more than 
you are serving ; in fact, while you are doing the 
work you are entirely ruling. It is only when 
the work is done and the results are placed before 
your superior that you show your service ; but it 
is so hard to mark the point where rule ends and 
service begins, that you might truthfully say that 
while you serve you rule, and while you rule you 
serve. 

So, as I look at it, the first thing to learn is 
the art of ruling instead of the art of serving. 
We are made to the image and likeness of God ; 
and man is given the earth for his kingdom. We 
have, therefore, a higher appreciation of our dig- 
nity when we learn how to rule rather than how 
to serve; but when the spiritual steps in and 
shows us that we really serve when we rule, we 
understand perfectly, and thus strong men are 
made. The strong man is a man who feels his 
responsibility and accepts it in a spirit of hu- 
mility. Such a man has the elements of greatness 
in him and will overcome every obstacle and 



RULE AND SERVICE 83 

every handicap. Because serving is so intimately 
bound up with ruling, I am going to devote most 
of this letter to speaking of rulers rather than of 
subjects. 

You are now at the head of a very little depart- 
ment, and rather young for even that small re- 
sponsibility. If you succeed in that department, 
within a short time your responsibilities will be 
greater, and you will have a number of others 
under your charge. As soon as you arrive at that 
stage, you will face two great obligations : one 
toward your work, the other toward your work- 
ers. Since the greatness of the work depends 
upon the workers, I am going to consider them 
first. The head of a department, a superior of 
any kind, is given his place that he may produce 
results. The priest gets results in souls ; the busi- 
ness man in money. Keep that idea before you 
always in your work. You are there to get 
results! Your superiors selected you because 
they thought you had in you the ability to obtain 
them. They depend upon you. In your turn you 
must depend upon others ; and in their turn they 
become, in smaller things, responsible parties 
themselves. Now the best way to secure results 
from those under you is to make them feel that 
they are shouldering part of your burden. Re- 
sponsibility is the most sobering /thing in the 
world. A baby would never be able to walk if the 



84 LETTERS TO JACK 

mother always carried it in her arms, or wheeled 
it around in the perambulator. The mother's 
responsibility is to see that the baby does not 
walk too soon, so that it later will walk correctly ; 
but the mother cannot walk for the baby — that 
the baby has to do itself. Did you ever see chicks 
come out of their shells % They break out and are 
busy at once. It is worth remarking that they 
arrive at maturity very soon. The reason is be- 
cause they are active early. When the time has 
come for them to earn their own living without 
assistance, they have the advantage of having 
been doing it partially from the very beginning. 
Instinct told the mother hen to have no hesitation 
about forgetting them. The more responsibility 
you put upon a subordinate, the bigger and 
brighter you are making that subordinate. It is 
by ruling that he learns how best to serve. The 
wisest ruler is he who gives the fewest orders but 
looks for the greatest results. 

I believe that the business man understands 
this much better than the ecclesiastic, and the 
ecclesiastic understands it much better than the 
statesman. Republics rarely get efficiency in gov- 
ernment, because they cannot always enforce the 
basic rules that it requires. Influence counts too 
much for one thing. The self-seeker has too much 
chance. Favoritism has opportunities that are 
not present anywhere else. To have an efficient 



RULE AND SERVICE 85 

government, we would have to demand an abso- 
lute monarchy. In other words, we would have 
to model the state after the business corpora- 
tion ; for the lack of efficiency is the weakness of 
republics. This weakness is always a danger and 
it can only be removed by dragging others into 
it. Since republics never want to become monar- 
chies, their only safety is in making republics out 
of monarchies. If a monarchy were established 
in any great state of the Western Hemisphere, 
it would be a menace not only to the prosperity, 
but to the very existence of every republic on the 
Western Hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is 
a very good example of a nation recognizing its 
own weaknesses. The test of anyone is his work, 
and the test of his work is the result. It is for the 
superior to see that the means are as worthy as 
the end. 

A certain Pope managed to select the most 
beautiful title ever taken by a ruler in this world. 
He called himself "Servant of the Servants of 
God". Here is an acknowledgment from one of 
the greatest of men that rule and service prac- 
tically amount to the same thing. Men are se- 
lected to rule only for the purpose of advancing 
the interests of their fellow-men, which means 
that they are merely in the service of their fellow- 
men. The trappings, the pomp, the dignity that 
go with government, are only necessary on the 



86 LETTERS TO JACK 

same principle that liveries are necessary. A 
democracy is a great thing if people would first 
learn how to be democrats ; but the real reason 
why democracies are not entirely successful is 
because perverse human nature insists on forget- 
ting that service means dignity as well as respon- 
sibility, that "to serve is to reign". No democ- 
racy can exist amongst ignorant people, because 
the mental training is not there to make them 
understand and use their responsibilities in- 
telligently. No democracy is possible amongst 
an irreligious people, because there is no 
higher sanction than themselves for public 
service. No democracy is possible amongst a 
sinful people, because one sin breeds another; 
and soon, by the very weakness of the people, 
the state is corrupted for the sake of indi- 
viduals. 

To be a good servant-ruler over the small 
things is to have the reward later on of being 
placed over what is great. The parable told in 
Holy Scripture about the three servants who 
were made rulers over their masters' talents, like 
all of Christ's parables applies universally. 
Since rule and service mean responsibility, they 
call for vigilance, activity, honesty, fairness and 
results. When you are placed over others, look 
upon each one of your employees as a person you 
are training for future leadership. The first 



RULE AND SERVICE 87 

requisite for you is to secure confidence in your- 
self. You cannot secure confidence in yourself 
by antagonizing your employees through irrita- 
bleness, dishonesty and unfairness. If you ex- 
pect those under you to be cheerful and happy in 
their work, be cheerful and happy yourself. If 
you want to be met with a smile in the morning, 
have one of your own on hand for early use. An 
even-tempered superior is the best kind of a 
superior to get along with. You know where such 
a person stands, and he radiates confidence. The 
meanest thing you could say about a superior is 
that he " meant well" as an apology for his occa- 
sional outbreaks. It really does not make any 
difference whether he " meant well" or not. He 
did not act well, and that's the thing that counts. 
I do not admire the superior who carries his good 
nature to the point where he thinks he ought to 
be always cracking jokes and telling stories, to 
make those under him believe that he really is a 
good-natured person. There is more solid good- 
nature in a merry twinkle of the eye than in all 
the Stories in a joke book. Stories take time, 
which is precious. A smile and a twinkle take no 
time. Any fool can tell a story ; but nobody can 
look kind when he is not kind, and deceive 
anyone. 

Honesty and fair play, which, after all, amount 
to about the same thing, are appreciated more 



88 LETTERS TO JACK 

than any other virtue in a superior; and it is 
right here that a man or a woman in a position 
of importance has to constantly keep examining 
his or her conscience. The easiest thing in the 
world, is to let yourself get the habit of judging 
what is good for others by what you like yourself. 
It is pretty hard for a farmer to answer the nod 
of a passer-by who assures him that it is a "fine 
day", when the farmer knows that it is not a fine 
day for him, because his land needs rain. Every- 
thing in God's world works out for the best and 
for the general good ; but individuals rarely can 
think of a general rule when they are hit them- 
selves. As an example : there is not really any 
argument for divorce from the standpoint of the 
general good. From that standpoint divorce is 
a curse to the world and a curse to the human 
race. Every argument, therefore, that you hear 
in its favor is a selfish argument, because it is an 
argument for the individual case. It is merely 
the lack of logic in the national mind that allows 
divorce to continue. This logic, however, is not 
lacking when it comes to the treatment of another 
kind of criminal — the one who commits murder. 
If you consider the murderer only as an indi- 
vidual, he should not be hanged or put in jail 
for life, because it is not going to do him any 
good. But he is not hanged or jailed for his own 
sake, but for the sake of society — for the general 



RULE AND SERVICE 89 

good. Here is where the public mind works log- 
ically. In judging others and their actions, try 
to get a little of the logic required for the gen- 
eral mind, and consider the work and deeds of 
your subordinates from the standpoint of the re- 
sults you are expecting for the business or cause, 
rather than for the results to yourself as a pri- 
vate individual. 

As a matter of fact, you do not amount to very 
much. You are only a cog in a wheel. It is not 
even the wheel that counts, but the machine ; not 
even the machine but the product. For a ma- 
chine to function well, every cog has to be doing 
its work honestly. Iron cogs usually do ; human 
cogs do not. The trouble with human cogs is 
always the fact that they become so selfish that 
they put their own personal feeling in place of 
what should be the general feeling. The easiest 
way to be fair with subordinates is to realize that 
they too are part of the machine, and in their own 
way are just as necessary as the other part of it. 
Of course, no big institution can get along with- 
out a head ; but it would be a sorry sort of a head 
that had no members beneath it. Some of the 
most brilliant men in this world died as the result 
of neglecting a little lump somewhere on their 
bodies that finally turned into a cancer. Some of 
the biggest movements and institutions in the 
world died, because the head had not honesty 



90 LETTERS TO JACK 

enough, or brains enough, to consider the general 
good. 

The easiest road a superior can take to success 
is the realization of the fact of his own service. 
The easiest way to realize that fact is by striving 
always to make one's own mind a part of the 
general mind. The easiest way to do that is by 
looking up to God. How admirably every part 
of His works functions, when its functioning is 
not interfered with by the only servant who has 
been given intelligence and free will. The sea- 
sons come and go ; the leaves die and are reborn ; 
the rain falls, and the sun shines; the earth 
stores its unused treasures away ; the ground pro- 
duces and rests until it regains its forces; the 
lower animals serve their turn; everything in 
nature, except man, runs like a clock. But man 
has free will and in that resembles God, and God 
gave Him the gift of intelligence. He has the 
power, therefore, to interfere if he wants to do so ; 
but when he uses it wrongfully, he gets in the way 
of the harmony of creation. He would not if he 
kept looking up to God. We would not be dream- 
ing of the millennium if all men acted as they 
know God wants them to act ; if they could keep 
selfishness out of their conduct and were part 
and parcel of God's machine. We would not err 
if we tried to imitate the perfections that we 
know are in God; or at least we would not err 



RULE AND SERVICE 91 

greatly enough to keep so much injustice in the 
world. Banish injustice and you banish sin. No 
man can be just and selfish at the same time. 
That is a supreme law which admits of no 
exceptions. 



IX 
OTHER PEOPLE 

The world is a great ocean beneath which there 
are innumerable fishing banks. Death is the shore 
at which we unload what we have taken, at the 
feet of God. 



Men respect their fellow-men for their good 
qualities, not for their spendings. 



Take everybody's good intentions for granted — 
but watch your step. 



OTHER PEOPLE 

My dear Jack : 

It is generally supposed that a man's " family'' 
consists only of very near relatives. I would, 
however, call these a man's intimate family. His 
real family consists of his relatives, his friends 
and his enemies ; because all of these have more or 
less close relations with him, and are more or 
less responsible for influencing his career. Out- 
side of this family stands the great mass of peo- 
ple with whom he is going to come into business 
and social relations. The Scriptures call this 
great body a man's " neighbors". It is a good 
name for them. I suppose that I should give 
them the same general name ; but, for no particu- 
lar reason, I have fallen into the habit of calling 
them the "Other People". 

Although for the success of any man or woman 
a great deal depends upon the way he or she 
treats friends and enemies, nevertheless I think 
more depends upon the way the Other People are 
treated. There are more of the Other People, 
and all are indifferent to you until they need 
you. Because they are indifferent to you until 

95 



96 LETTERS TO r JACK 

that time, and must then go to you, or then listen 
to you, they are somewhat like judges of your 
case, unprejudiced by affection or by hatred. 
They are the people likely to take you for what 
you are worth. 

The Scripture says : * i Cast thy bread upon the 
running waters : for after a long time thou shalt 
find it again. ' ' No one can very well improve the 
counsels of the Scriptures; yet everybody tries, 
if not to improve them, at least to adapt them. 
I am like the rest, and my adaptation of this text 
is: "Cast your cake upon the waters; it will 
attract the fishes and make fat those that come 
into your net. ' ' We are all of us out fishing with 
nets for something. This world is a great ocean 
beneath which there are innumerable fishing 
banks. Death is the shore at which we unload 
what we have taken, at the feet of God. Most of 
us are hoping to land "big fish", that is to say, to 
do big things. It is perfectly legitimate for us to 
have such hopes ; provided we do not forget that 
what we catch must go to the shore for inspection. 
If we forget that, it is probable that we will not 
throw out the bad fish before landing, and thus 
keep the catch clean. Cast your cake upon the 
waters'? Yes, for cake is sweeter than bread; 
but do not make it too sweet. In dealing with 
Other People it is best to treat them all as 
friends, but watch them as if they were enemies. 



OTHER PEOPLE 97 

A school-master once said to me that the best 
way to manage boys is, "to think of them as little 
angels, but to watch them as little devils". An 
enlargement of this idea is a rather good rule in 
dealing with men. Kindness, courtesy, fairness, 
honesty, candor, all can be brought into play; 
but never forget that the Other People have nets 
out too ; and their success does not depend upon 
giving you what they catch. The most you have 
a right to expect from them, in fairness and jus- 
tice, is a chance to moor your boat where the fish- 
ing is good, provided it does not hurt their own 
chances. 

Some people seem to imagine that they have a 
right to get presents of fish from their neigh- 
bors' catches. It is here that trouble begins. 
They haven't any such right. They only have a 
right to a fair chance. Such people are com- 
monly called "grafters" and "pikers". There 
is nothing so contemptible and pitiful in life as 
to see an able-bodied and talented man trying to 
live off his neighbors, with his hand eternally out 
to beg and his mouth perpetually open to com- 
plain. The worst habit in the world to get into 
is the habit of taking for yourself what you do not 
earn, of always looking for gifts. It is a form of 
stealing that hasn't exactly been condemned by 
the Ten Commandments, but is reprehensible be- 
cause it injures the soul. It certainly makes the 



98 LETTERS TO r JACK 

man who practices it an object of contempt to 
others. Amongst Other People you find this 
specimen everywhere. In the street car he never 
puts his hand into his pocket to pay a fare ; or, if 
he is shamed into doing it, he never has the 
change. He always drops in to see you at lunch 
time, or trumps up the excuse of an important 
conference so that you may invite him. He never 
goes to the theatre except at someone else's ex- 
pense. If you play a game with him, he will 
never bet unless with inferior players ; and then 
he is a willing " sport", and wants everybody to 
know it. Avoid this man. Never give way to the 
temptation to be like him. "Pay as you go" ; be 
as good as the next man, but do not let the next 
man take advantage of your goodness. Above 
all, make up your mind that, if you cannot do 
your share in any company, it is not the com- 
pany for you. Never mind assurances that your 
companions understand the situation, or that 
they really do not expect you to do as they 
do. If you accept favors thus you are not a com- 
panion; you are an inferior; you do not "belong". 
Avoid patronizing the Other People by getting 
into a crowd and paying for everything. Many 
will let you do it; but in their hearts they are 
calling you a fool. Nobody respects a spender, 
and the word "good fellow", as it is commonly 
used, does not really mean anything good. The 



OTHER PEOPLE 99 

average "good fellow" is not a good fellow at all. 
He is a person so full of human respect that he 
is trying to buy the respect of humans, which 
cannot be bought. Men respect their fellow-men 
for their good qualities, not for their spendings. 
I read this bit of truth once, and it has stuck to 
me ever since: "When a man begins to neglect 
his family, people begin to call him a good fel- 
low. ' ' Indeed, I would rather have a man call me 
a thief than a good fellow; because at least a 
thief may be physically and mentally a strong 
and courageous man, though weak spiritually. A 
"good fellow" is often a thief in a meaner way. 
He squanders what duty requires him to use for 
his family. The only sort of courage he has is 
too often the courage to beat his wife and abuse 
his children when they ask for what they are 
entitled to have. For heaven's sake, don't be a 
"good fellow". Be an honest man. Be self- 
respecting in your own kind of society. Let 
everybody know that you stand on your own feet ; 
and that, when you give charity, you give it to 
those in need and not to encourage vice and 
laziness. 

Avoid the man popularly known as a 
"climber". He has only one desire in seeking 
your society : to secure the social prestige he can 
get out of you or the people with whom you are 
connected. He is the easiest man in the world to 



100 LETTERS TO JACK 

discover, because he is always telling you of the 
important people he has met and what they said 
to him. He looks cheap even though he wears 
the very best of clothes. In some way that you 
do not quite understand, he may consider your 
acquaintanceship an asset ; and he will seek it for 
that reason only. This is the sort of a man who, 
while he does not rely upon himself at all, yet 
will often get into the society he desires to enter ; 
only, however, to find out that it would have been 
much better for him had he stayed out. Society 
usually has a lot of parasites of this kind. They 
amuse society, and society wants to be amused. 
At every king's court in the olden days, there 
was a jester wearing cap and bells. Anybody 
who was deformed enough, or funny enough, 
could be a jester. He mixed freely with lords 
and ladies, and with royalty itself. But who 
would want to be a jester? We have no jesters 
with cap and bells in modern society; but there 
are those who take the jester's place splendidly. 
Never be tempted to ' ' climb ' '. If you succeed, it 
will be to your sorrow. Society seeks those who 
naturally belong to it ; and the society you enter 
unsought, you enter either at the cost of your 
self-respect, or it is not worth your considera- 
tion. Water will find its level and so will people. 
One of the most expressive words in the dic- 
tionary of slang is the word "fourflusher". 



OTHER PEOPLE 101 

There are more than enough f ourflushers in the 
world. He is a fourflusher who is trying to 
spend what he does not possess, to live where he 
has no right to live, to eat and drink what he has 
not the money to pay for, to be what he is not and 
could not be. The fourflusher thinks he succeeds. 
He never does with the " people who know", 
for his very extravagance exposes him; and, 
like the " climber", he turns into a jester, — only 
in his case he is an object of laughter and con- 
tempt for a wider range of people. The 
"climber" is often satisfied to be thought a fool 
in a limited circle, that he may be thought a wise 
man in general. A fourflusher has a harder 
row to hoe, because more people find him out, 
and therefore more people laugh at him. If you 
are only a clerk say that you are a clerk ; and do 
not, in a grandiloquent way, mention that you 
are " connected with" such and such a house. Do 
not boast about your friendships or your attain- 
ments. It takes a genius to deceive with that; 
indeed, it takes a genius to be a successful 
fourflusher. Thank God you show no sign of 
being a genius along that line. If one insists on 
being a fourflusher, it is better for him to be 
found out and found out quickly. 

In dealing with the Other People, one of the 
most important things to get rid of is prejudice ; 
but in the case of a young Catholic, it ought to 



102 LETTERS TO JACK 

be an easy thing to get rid of. Prejudice breeds 
hate, and hate is the destruction of peace. Your 
Church, it is true, teaches with certainty on mat- 
ters of faith and morals; but the fact that you 
know does not give you a right to be prejudiced 
against others who do not believe as you do. It 
is not true that almost every horse has a blind 
side, but it is true that almost every man has. If 
men had no blind sides, they would all be perfect ; 
and none of us is perfect. There are some things 
that Other People know well which I could 
not learn in a million years — trigonometry, for 
example ; and there are some things that are clear 
to other men's vision that are not clear to mine. 
You have religious certainty partially because of 
the chances you had in your youth to learn the 
" truth that makes you free". The Other People 
may not have had the same chance; but they 
think they are right just as surely as you know 
you are. They are honest, and therefore you owe 
them respect; for you owe respect to honesty 
wherever you meet it. Prejudice is nothing more 
than pre- judging, as the word indicates. Now, 
you have no right to prejudge. God is the Judge, 
and you are to appear before His court in com- 
pany with all the Other People. What are you 
to gain by judging those about you before their 
time ? Prejudice is not going to put a dollar in 
your pocket, or give you one happy day, or one 



OTHER PEOPLE 103 

moment of honest satisfaction. It is not going 
to help the Other People. It is not going to make 
the world any happier; on the contrary, it is 
going to make the world more miserable. It is 
going to hurt the Other People and it is going 
to hurt you. Avoid prejudice. If you are in- 
vited to join a society that boasts of the charity 
to its members, and the help it is going to give 
you in business, or in other activities, think twice 
before you join it. It may be built upon preju- 
dice. It may be contrary to the spirit of Christ, 
to the charity that should exist amongst all the 
children of God. 

A consideration of societies very naturally 
arises in referring to your relations with the 
Other People. Through societies you meet them 
in numbers, and you deal with them not only as 
individuals, but in the mass. There is a useful 
side to societies; but the moment they become 
selfish the usefulness has passed away. The mo- 
ment societies cause a young man to depend upon 
anyone but himself and the grace of God, they 
become dangerous. If it will make you happier 
to be in a society, by all means, join it; provided 
it is not of the dangerous kind; but if in joining 
you have the idea that the society is going to 
help you climb, to give you a position that you 
will not have to work for, keep out of it. Above 
all else, do not wear badges. Avoid lodge watch 



104 LETTERS TO JACK 

charms and buttons. Here, of course, you have 
the laugh on your old uncle who has a rosette on 
every coat ; but let me say that, while the society 
button is a possible sign of the f ourflusher, the 
rosette is at least supposed to be a badge of dis- 
tinction. The button is merely a vulgar substi- 
tute for a decoration. Decorations are given by 
nations for distinguished services rendered. In 
our democratic country we have no decorations, 
except the Medal of Honor; but Congress has 
recognized certain marks of war service, so that 
in this country, as in other countries, the rosette 
means a decoration won by service to the nation. 
While the wearing of it may indicate some pride 
which perhaps a man should not have, neverthe- 
less it comes close to being a legitimate pride. A 
button represents nothing. It is not an honor to 
belong to a fraternal society. It is often the 
opposite. It is not a mark of distinction, since 
anybody may win that sort of a badge by the pay- 
ment of money ; but, above all, it is not the mark 
of a strong man. You never saw a society button 
on the coat of a statesman. You never saw one on 
the coat of a great painter, or a great sculptor, 
or a great writer. Society buttons are so com- 
mon that distinction goes to the man who does 
not wear one. But over and above all this stands 
the fact that a society button, or badge, is a sign 
that the man who wears it is depending upon 



OTHER PEOPLE 105 

something outside of himself. It is therefore a 
mark of weakness, a hand stretched forth to beg. 
As any part of your body which is exercised be- 
comes strong through use, so your own person- 
ality will become strong from within by using it. 
A man who lies in bed when he is not sick, finds 
himself weak when he gets out ; and therefore in 
a way he has become sicker. A man who habit- 
ually uses a crutch that he does not need will ulti- 
mately need it. A man who uses the crutch of a 
society in business or social life, weakens himself 
just that much. One sign of a strong character 
is found in buttonless lapels and plain watch 
chains. 

In dealing with Other People take everybody's 
good intention for granted — but watch your step, 
for good intentions may be like the Birnim wood 
in Macbeth, only severed trees carried to deceive. 
Be slow to believe that any man is wrong, and 
never give in to the idea that he is until you have 
certainty. Even when you are certain do not talk 
about it to others. Do not, in fact, as I already 
told you, talk about anybody, except to speak 
good of them. Hunt for the good thing to say. 
Look upon every person you meet as a man or 
woman with trials and troubles like your own, 
trying hard to make his or her way, to do the right 
thing, and in the end to get to the right place. 
Reverence their reputations as you reverence 



106 LETTERS TO JACK 

your own. Be kind and smiling to everybody, 
but slap nobody on the back. If you find anyone 
you particularly like be chary about prying into 
his life or you may get a shock. Trust everybody 
but do not put temptation in anyone's way unless 
you have to. And do not flatter people; but 
remember that, while it is true " honey catches 
more flies than vinegar" — and also more bears — 
neither flies nor bears can live on an exclusive 
honey diet. 



X 

THE WOKLD 

It was a mark of divine wisdom in Christ that he 
foresaw that the world was going to do to His 
followers what it had done to Him. 



Don't worry if you find that the world is against 
you. If the world were for you, you would have 
cause for worry. 



Knowledge alone does not give us discipline ; but 
the getting of knowledge does. 



THE WOELD 

My dear Jack: 

Yesterday I was glancing over the editorial 
pages of a New York weekly paper whose chief 
reason for existence seems to be enmity to "the 
things that are". Naturally, the Catholic Church 
is included. A rather vicious editorial was 
headed, "The Catholic Church against the 
World". I smiled when I read that title. It was 
intended as a "knock", but like most "knocks", 
it succeeded in being a "boost". As a matter of 
fact, to any reader of the life of Christ it must 
be apparent that Christianity of necessity is ar- 
rayed against the world ; and it naturally follows 
that the world will always be arrayed against 
Christianity. The Church of the poor is the 
Church of Christ ; for to the wedding feast came 
the blind and the lame. The "big men" of the 
world were quick to refuse their own invitations. 
The Church the world hates must be the true 
Church ; for Christ constantly warned against the 
world, and even went so far as to say to His fol- 
lowers: "Fear not if the world hates you." It 
was a mark of divine wisdom in Christ that He 

109 



110 LETTERS TO JACK 

foresaw that the world was going to do to His 
followers what it had done to Him. 

All the above was preliminary to telling you, 
Jack, that the world has a silken cord around 
every human being, one especially around youth, 
and it is constantly pulling us away from the 
things that are good. The pull was never 
stronger perhaps than it is today. As the world 
becomes richer, worldlings become more insistent 
in demanding the comforts that riches alone can 
buy. As democracy advances beyond the zone of 
safety, the world demands more and more that 
all restraint be thrown aside. As the world be- 
comes more " civilized", in the poorest sense of 
the word, it demands more and more that men 
take their pleasures here, and pay less attention 
to hopes of the hereafter. The pull of the world is 
away from pain, from discomfort, from labor, 
from effort ; in other words, from the very things 
that have been responsible for the comforts and 
the achievements in which this same world re- 
joices. The world is against the discipline which 
gave it all its great achievements. The big de- 
mand today is for a freedom of its own construc- 
tion. Everybody asks "to live his or her own 
life", which is another way of saying that every- 
body is becoming selfish. We are in an age of 
"isms" that are mostly aimed at giving us a 
"good time", and end in giving us the "blues." 



THE WORLD 111 

A few days ago, while driving outside the city, 
I noticed two very large fields. One had evi- 
dently been lying fallow for a great many years ; 
but the other was full of waving corn. Instantly 
the process that worked on both was pictured to 
my mind. It was evident that the fallow field 
had once been used for raising hay. There were 
still some patches of hay in it, or rather there 
was some tall grass, mixed up with shrubs of all 
kinds, saplings, wild flowers, weeds. When the 
owner began to neglect that land, blowing time 
had come for the dandelions; and a wonderful 
number of the little white balloons, with seeds in 
the baskets, burst over the field. Each basket 
dropped on a blade of grass ; then the rain came 
and washed the seeds into the moist earth. Be- 
tween the blades the dandelions sprang up, but 
always at the expense of the useful grass. Later 
came the rag-weed, the golden rod and the poi- 
soned sumac ; and then countless other seeds, each 
looking for a foothold. It took years to do it, but 
when the years had passed the field was a picture 
of the world without Christ, of a "free world", 
of a world without restraints. The weeds are, of 
course, a survival of the strongest, but the strong- 
est in the worldly sense is not always the de- 
sirable. Every plant in the field was free to do 
its best. Each one of them did its best ; and so 
even to look at the result, causes pain. 



112 LETTERS TO tfACK 

The other field had nothing in it but corn — 
beautiful corn, grown high and with cobs well 
covered with nourishment. There was not a 
thing about that corn that could not be put to use, 
even down to its roots. It occupied the field to 
the exclusion of everything else. What process 
produced this splendid result ? The farmer had 
gone into that field with a plow, scored it a foot 
deep and broke it into sods. Then he went in 
again and harrowed out all the weeds. After that 
he went over the field with a pulverizer. He 
smashed the remaining sods to pieces, so that 
there was nothing left but the soft yielding soil. 
Only then did he plant. When the corn came up, 
he again went to cutting and slashing at the earth. 
He pulverized it over again with the hoe. He 
took out every noxious plant that could hurt ; and 
he went back to the same task again and again. 
So the useful thing was done. 

The Christian Church is the mystical body of 
Christ ; and Christians are the useful things that 
grow in the field. How was the field first pre- 
pared ? It was prepared by the breaking of the 
flesh of Christ Himself. Like the field He was 
scored and plowed with pain. There wasn't an 
inch of His body left without a wound, and not a 
spot, no matter how small, without the red but 
glorious stain of His blood. Then from His own 
lips fell the seed of the Word, out of which 



THE WORLD 113 

spring the Christian lives that are to be " gath- 
ered into His barns ' '. Again and again the mys- 
tical body of Christ is cut and scored for the cul- 
tivation of souls. All the while the rain of God's 
grace falls on the field and on the plants to give 
them strength and nourishment. Thus are souls 
grown for God. 

The great lesson that comes out of all this is 
that of the utility of pain. Christianity is built 
upon pain. We are growing constantly upon 
pain. Love is pain. We were given human life 
in the pain of our mothers. We go into Eternal 
Life through the pain of death. We are kept in 
God's ways by pain. I might even say that we 
cannot grow to full Christian stature without 
pain. 

But since the world is against pain, since it is 
looking only for comforts, it follows that Chris- 
tianity, born in pain and living in pain and to 
die to the earth in pain, is against the world. 
But this is not actually so hard as it seems, for 
Christianity alone understands what is beyond 
the gates of the Great Pain ; and knows that the 
plowing and the harrowing and the hoeing must 
be done to produce the result. 

If you would be a success even in the world, by 
which I mean the kind of a success that begins in 
this world but grows into the next, do not shrink 
from discipline ; therefore, do not fear pain over- 



114 LETTERS TO JACK 

much. Nothing you can do will take either one 
out of your life; but you may do very much to 
get good out of both. Discipline in reality epito- 
mizes the whole idea of education. Sidney Smith, 
referring to knowledge, says : " It is worth while 
in the days of our youth to strive hard for this 
great discipline." But knowledge alone does not 
give us any discipline, while the getting of knowl- 
edge does. A truly educated man is not the one 
who speaks many languages and knows all 
branches of science. He is rather the one who 
has profited by his efforts to learn these things, 
as well as the higher things of God, to the extent 
that he is disciplined. The truly educated man 
is the man who has mastered himself. A river 
without banks would not be a river at all. Steam 
unconfined is worthless as a power. Thoughts 
without reason are useless. Love without respect 
is base. But the banks are the discipline of the 
river, the cylinder of the steam, reason of thought 
and respect of love. The big thing that religion 
does for a man or a woman is in the soul disci- 
pline that it gives. There is no education without 
that. There is only one step between knowledge 
and barbarism. The French revolutionists re- 
jecting discipline, took barbarism, and drenched 
their country with blood. 

Do not try the easy path if you would make a 
success in life and a greater success in death. No 



THE WORLD 115 

one ever succeeded who picked the easy path. 
Some people are placed upon it and like it so well 
that they will not seek another. These are mostly 
the unfortunate sons of foolish millionaires. The 
biggest curse a boy could have is the fortune that 
puts him on the easy path and holds him there. 
The greatest gift he can get is the chance to suf- 
fer. It is an unfortunate thing that so many 
who get that chance, do not take the fruit out of 
suffering, or have not the grace to do it, and 
so drift and drift until they end disgruntled 
failures, 

Don't worry if you find, therefore, that the 
world is against you. If the world were for you, 
you would have cause for worry ; but when it is 
against you, then you may know that you are on 
the right track. The best of it is that, even though 
the world is against you, it cannot prevent your 
succeeding ; for all men who win out in the battle 
of life succeed in spite of the world. The world 
hates to confess that you are right; but it is 
forced to make the confession, because it does not 
trust its own. When, even for the protection of 
its own pleasures it demands honesty, it knows 
that it must go outside of itself to find it. When 
it wants greatness, it knows that true greatness 
is not found in its cabarets. When it demands 
genius, it knows that its own kind of genius is 
like a poppy, brilliant enough in color, but full 



116 LETTERS TO JACK 

of a deadly soporific. All the world's blossoms 
are poison-flowers. Blossoms of the God who is 
against the world are less brilliant in color, per- 
haps, to the eye of the world ; but their perfume 
is the sweetest and it lasts through eternity. 

Perhaps to the minds of many it may sound 
strange that I should counsel you to love pain; 
but when I say "pain" I mean all the things that 
make for discipline; the unpleasant things that 
prepare you, the hard work that wearies you, the 
good thoughts that shut the ears of your soul 
from what men think are the sweetest melodies. 
This is the pain I mean. But even out of phys- 
ical pain you may get many things for your good. 
You may rise triumphantly above it. You may 
make it a small thing in your life instead of let- 
ting it fill your life. Above all you may make it 
count for fertility, and, because of its plowing 
and harrowing and pulverizing and hoeing of 
your soul, you may, out of it, grow into vigor 
and strength. 



XI 

CITIZENSHIP 

Already we are beginning to talk of a u wider 
democracy " than was planned by our fathers, 
not realizing that the " wider democracy " of 
tomorrow may be only a swinging back of the 
pendulum to absolute monarchy. 



It is important to realize that when monarchies 
fail it is because of the monarch; but when 
democracies fail it is because of the people. 



Poverty is a cement for democracy which riches 
corrode. 



CITIZENSHIP 
My dear Jack: 

The proper time for talking to a young man 
about citizenship is when he has reached the age 
of twenty — one year before he assumes citizen's 
duties, when his mind has already matured suffi- 
ciently to make his thinking intelligent; but 
with twelve months ahead to leisurely consider 
advice. 

The fatal errors of the age arise chiefly from 
the shallowness of the modern mind, which is too 
ready to accept ideas merely because they are 
new and interesting. The world today is eter- 
nally hungering for novelty, which unfortunately 
it takes for discovery. We exalt the age in which 
we live with very good reason, for it has produced 
many really good things ; but we forget that we 
purchased at a high price what good we have. We 
seldom think of the multitude of ruins that sur- 
round our modern skyscraper. Fearing to go too 
slow, we have raced. Our own nation trembles 
at every blast. We are not ready to admit, even 
to ourselves, that our democracy is going to en- 
dure. We say that it is, but inwardly we doubt 
our own optimism. Already we are beginning 

119 



120 LETTERS TO JACK 

to talk of a " wider democracy " than that which 
was planned by our fathers, not realizing that 
the " wider democracy" of tomorrow may be only 
a swinging back of the pendulum to absolute 
monarchy. Our government upheld the recent 
Mexican revolution, but did not discover until 
it was too late that it intended to supplant dem- 
ocracy by socialism. Socialism was actually es- 
tablished in Yucatan, and upheld by one-man 
power. The Church knew all along that the 
trend toward socialism meant a trend toward 
absolute monarchy. It makes very little differ- 
ence practically, whether you call the ruler a 
monarch or a president. It makes very little 
difference whether you call a government by the 
name of kingdom or republic. It is not title that 
counts ; it is the power. I very much fear that 
the " wider democracy" our day looks for will, 
when it arrives, be the end of democracy of any 
kind. 

It is perfectly true that our democracy has not 
worked out ideally, but that should not be taken 
as proving it a failure. Monarchies have not 
worked out ideally, and they have the advantage 
of a sounder philosophy behind them. But it is 
important to realize that, when monarchies fail 
it is because of the monarch; but when democra- 
cies fail, it is because of the people. So the fail- 
ure of a democracy is something to be regretted 



CITIZENSHIP 121 

far more than the failure of a monarchy. It is 
bad enough for a king to sell the liberties of his 
people; but it is worse for a people to sell the 
liberties they had bought so dearly for them- 
selves. 

We have a clear field for democracy in North 
America, for we have two, at least, that are 
working out well. I refer, of course, to the 
United States, and Canada. The United States 
is a democracy under its proper name. Canada 
is a democracy masquerading under the name 
of a royal colony. Both have been successful. 
Their continued success depends on all their 
people rather than on an individual ruler. We 
have the opportunity to prove the very attrac- 
tive theory of democracy quite sound; and, in 
proving it, we work for the happiness of mil- 
lions. 

The greatest obstacle to the success of a dem- 
ocracy is that it depends in a too impersonal sort 
of way on a very large body of citizens. The 
responsibility, therefore, does not weigh heavily 
enough upon each individual. It is much easier 
to have a successful Republic of San Marino, 
with its handful of citizens, none wealthy but 
each taking a real and personal interest in it, 
than to have a successful Republic of the United 
States of America, depending upon the rather 
vague affection of many chiefly anxious to pile 



122 LETTERS TO JACK 

up fortunes for themselves. Wealth inevitably 
makes for careless citizenship. A significant fact 
is, that the well-to-do cannot be. brought out to 
vote on a rainy day. Poverty is a cement for 
democracy which riches corrode. A small popu- 
lation keeps loyalty concentrated and effective, 
while millions spread the responsibility out too 
thin. Millions are not an asset to a democracy, 
but rather a very great and a very dangerous 
liability. When, as in the United States, we have 
wealth and a hundred million citizens, it becomes 
all the more necessary for individuals to con- 
sider their duties well and often, trying to make 
up for the inevitable delinquency of their fel- 
lows. 

The importance of thinking deeply over the 
obligations of responsible citizenship is great. It 
is no light thing to take on one the burden of 
the ballot ; and the fact that so many share the 
burden is an added, not a lessened weight. There 
are too many who hold their duties lightly, to 
permit the serious to shirk. There are too many 
who depend for their well-being on the action 
of individual citizens to permit those who know, 
to act as if they did not know. I counsel you to 
approach the coming responsibilities carefully 
and to assume them very thoughtfully. 

Neither can I too much urge upon you to dis- 
trust theories until they have been tried, but 



CITIZENSHIP 123 

never to dismiss them untouched. Outside of 
revealed truth and the truths of natural religion, 
all progress has come from theorizing. Theories 
have a way of rejecting themselves, or proving 
themselves, if you give them a chance. When 
they prove themselves, they become accepted 
principles and facts. The common mind, if you 
let it work its way, does not go far wrong, since 
it is always at least open to conviction. Selfish- 
ness, however, often swerves it from the proper 
path. Sloth and sin have the same effect upon 
it. Right does not always win in an election, any 
more than in. a battle; but when right loses, it 
is because honest thinking was not done, re- 
sponsibilities were slurred over. God has a way 
of letting the common mind, when deceived, run 
to disaster, so that out of it a fresh start can be 
made. Once the common mind goes wrong, it 
needs disaster to set it right, for the down-grade 
always stops with a bump at the bottom of the 
hill. * 

You will hear it said that every citizen should 
vote. Some governments interfere with individ- 
ual liberty to the extent of forcing citizens to 
vote. It is true and it is not true that every 
citizen should vote. Every great obligation is 
reached only by piling minor obligations on top 
of one another. The obligation of voting pre- 
supposes the obligation of honest voting. The 



124 LETTERS TO JACK 

obligation of honest voting presupposes the obli- 
gation of conscientious consideration. The citi- 
zen who has not fulfilled his minor obligations 
should refrain from thrusting his ignorance into 
the solution of a great question. No one has a 
right to vote until he has made himself capable 
of judging. Those who have not made them- 
selves capable of judging should leave voting to 
better men. When we utter the commonplace 
that " every citizen should go to the polls", we 
are merely saying that every citizen should be 
an honest and thoughtful citizen. 

The citizens of a democracy are judges, sitting 
in the court of public opinion on questions that 
concern even the very existence, as well as the 
prosperity of their country, and the happiness 
of its people. Judges may err, but should never 
err willfully. A citizen, therefore, cannot let a 
political party do his thinking for him and re- 
main an upright judge. He cannot shift his re- 
sponsibility over on anybody else. Political par- 
ties are necessary, just as lawyers are necessary 
in the courts ; but they are not judges, they are 
pleaders. The judge has no right to go down, 
mingle with the lawyers, and take sides in a case 
that he is trying. The really honest citizen is 
never a partisan. It is not a disgrace to be "on 
the fence", for "on the fence" means to be on 
the bench. My counsel to you is to stay on the 



CITIZENSHIP 125 

bench when you arrive on it, and be free in fact 
as well as in name. Never vote for any party 
unless it has made good its case. Bring your con- 
science along with you to every election. It was 
Henry Clay who said: "I had rather be right 
than be President." We can improve that say- 
ing by adding; " Still better is it to be right and 
President." So I had rather be right than vic- 
torious, but it is better to be right and victorious. 



XII 
CLEANLINESS 

It is quite useless to tell a young man not to 
narrate filthy stories or to blaspheme, if he has 
the filth in his mind and the thoughts of blas- 
phemy in his soul. 



Trace out all the failures in the world and you 
will find that impurity has the largest toll of 
victims. 



He who guards his thoughts also guards his 
tongue. 



CLEANLINESS 

My dear Jack: 

This letter is not about bathing, in spite of 
its title. Neither you nor your fellow modern 
young men need to be informed on that subject. 
Our day has exalted the bath, but I do not think 
we are going quite so far as the old Romans. 
We are too busy for one thing. The worst of 
us have to take our pleasures in a hurry ; so the 
old Romans must still remain in a bathing class 
by themselves. 

The unfortunate thing about the old Romans 
was the fact that, though clean without, they were 
foul within ; and so they succeeded in attaching 
to the idea of a clean skin the idea of a filthy 
mind. When Christianity arrived there was a 
revolt which drove some good men to the oppo- 
site extreme, not because the saintly people loved 
dirt, but because they loved mortification. Had 
paganism not made cleanliness an excuse for lux- 
ury and vice, certain Christians would never 
have been affrighted at the bath. Now it is 
known that there is a " golden mean". If " clean- 
liness" is not really "next to godliness", it is at 
least not opposed to godliness. I rather admire 

129 



130 LETTERS TO JACK 

some of the saints for the sacrifices they made 
to combat an evil that was much worse than dirt. 
Had Borne been dirty, I question if she would 
have fallen so soon. The bath had more to do 
with her fall than the Goths. The legacy of the 
luxury bath to the Vandals who slept out their 
strength in their villas around Carthage was the 
appropriate revenge of the conquered. 

Luxury breeds uncleanness of heart and soul ; 
but there is an uncleanness of heart and soul 
that precedes luxury. This is the uncleanness 
that kills all that is good in a man, the surest 
road to absolute failure. Ponder often on the 
Beatitude: " Blessed are the clean of heart, for 
they shall see God." 

It is good to have the blessing put on the clean 
of heart; for that implies interior cleanliness, 
and gets us to the root of the virtue of purity at 
once. Purity is within, though the manifesta- 
tion of it is without. It is quite useless to tell 
a young man not to narrate filthy stories, or to 
blaspheme, if he has the filth in his mind and the 
thoughts of blasphemy in his soul. Doctors to- 
day are getting away from drugs so as to attack 
the root rather than the manifestations of dis- 
ease. The doctors of the soul did that from the 
beginning. As "the wish is father to the 
thought," they sought to change the unworthy 
desires of men by substituting the desire for 



CLEANLINESS 131 

God. To cure impurity it is necessary to work 
on the heart. The heart will take care of the 
mind, and the mind will, by God's grace which 
strengthens the will, take care of the actions. 

There is one kind of flight that is not coward- 
ice. It is flight from the occasions of sin, from 
evil and impure thoughts. This flight is bravery, 
the bravery that wins. Impurity cannot be trifled 
with. It is too insidious an enemy of God and 
man. Flee the very thought of it. Avoid the oc- 
casions of it. Put a guard on every sense through 
which it may enter the soul. It is like a raging 
flood when you fail to stop the first break in your 
defences. The smallest trickle through the dyke 
is dangerous. The flood itself kills every good 
thought and aspiration. It overflows from one 
soul to another. It ruins races and peoples and 
nations. Trace out all the failures of the world 
and you will find that impurity has the largest 
toll of victims. Would you swallow a tiny germ 
of cholera just because it is so small ? Then, do 
not entertain a bad thought because it is so weak. 
The cholera germ is not small in its power; and 
the evil thought is anything but weak. 

He who guards his thoughts also guards his 
tongue. Blasphemy is, like all sins, the depth of 
folly. No one ever profited by it to the value of 
a penny. It gets you nowhere. It gives you 
nothing. It stamps you a boor, a fool or a knave 



132 LETTERS TO r JACK 

to clean-spoken people. There is no reason in it. 
There is no consolation. It leaves only bitterness 
after it to the one who is its slave, and only hurt 
for those who hear it. When the Jews stoned 
blasphemers they inflicted a just penalty on 
them ; for a blasphemer is a rotten apple in the 
barrel and should be thrown out to save the rest. 
Be clean for God's sake. Be clean for your 
own sake. Be clean for your neighbor's sake. 
Be clean for your country's sake. Be clean of 
body, clean of heart, clean of lips, clean of 
thought, clean of mind. You need very little 
more than that to be a success, even in a worldly 
way. When a man is thus clean, it shows that 
he has an intellect. I would take my chances for 
other things a thousand times more readily with 
the clean man than with the filthy one. If the 
latter had the genius of Cicero I would yet not 
want a shameless man around me. He cannot 
do enough for me in a worldly way to offset the 
harm his very presence causes. One of the worst 
terrors in the idea of Hell is its associations ; for 
by losing the Supreme Cleanliness, we drop to 
an eternal contact with all that is supremely 
unclean. 



XIII 
LOVE 

There isn't anything funnier, and yet there isn't 
anything more appealing, than a boy or a girl 
suffering and happy in " love "; and yet there 
isn't anything quite so fearful as that same love 
when it has discovered itself to itself. 



A baby is attracted by a shining ornament, and a 
youth is attracted by bright eyes. Both may be 
fools in their own way. 



LOVE 

My dear Jack: 

I can almost see you smile when you open this 
letter and almost hear the whispered question: 
"How can forty-six years of inexperience teach 
modern twenty anything about the great lesson 
of loving?" Yes, I know. Love, you think, was 
cut out of my life ; while to you it is not only per- 
missible, but much to be desired. But how do 
you know that it was cut out of my life J Mortal 
eyes have not searched hearts ; and the great bulk 
of the love that has been in the world, and is still 
in the world, has been, and is, love unconf essed. 
Indeed, I think the strongest loves are those that 
never, by the touch of speech, were released from 
the heart. It may be that I know a great deal 
more about it than you do; though in another 
way. One thing I am willing to confess : of what 
the world calls "love", I have known nothing by 
experience. 

But if I have not in manhood had any experi- 
ence, at least stern duty has always forced ob- 
servation. A pastor very soon gets to fear the 
thing that seems so often to be stronger than God 
Himself. He knows what sends many of the 

135 



136 LETTERS TO JACK 

young people, who owe much to his careful teach- 
ings, straight on the downward path to perdition. 
Every pastor has remembrances of long argu- 
mentations, in which he had the right side, with 
reason, logic, self-interest and a great many other 
things supporting him; and on the other side 
nothing but "love" — but it was love that won. 
He remembers very well that he entered into the 
fight hopeless, knowing in advance that he was 
beaten, but fighting on for the sake of duty. 
"Love", as the world knows it, has been a will-o'- 
the-wisp that beckoned many lost ones into the 
everglades. 

But, after all, is that thing really love ? It is 
not. Some people cannot understand how reason 
and love could ever go together; yet I cannot 
understand love without reason. 

To show you what I mean I am going to ask 
you to consider the two kinds of love, both of 
which inevitably push themselves on the atten- 
tion : that of husband and wife, and that of par- 
ent and child. Which is the stronger and the 
more enduring 1 My observation tells me that it 
is the latter. The love of husband and wife 
changes, with fading beauty, into a wonderful 
companionship, that has a charm all its own. It 
lasts less as love than as understanding. It 
steadies into something reasonable, having a defi- 
nite end in view ; and dies only when the reason 



LOVE 137 

is quarreled out of it. I have no hesitation in 
saying that the emotion immediately preceding 
this understanding is not love. It is passion, 
chastened and made somewhat beautiful by re- 
spect. I think that the boy or girl stage of love 
is very beautiful, because it is a love that is full 
of fear to touch and spoil. There isn't anything 
funnier, and yet there isn't anything more ap- 
pealing, than a boy or a girl suffering, and happy, 
in "love"; and yet there isn't anything quite so 
fearful as that same love when it has discovered 
itself to itself. It is then that passion steps in. 
I have come to the melancholy conclusion that too 
many mistake passion for something better. The 
love that begins pure, that passes through the 
second stage when it is not so pure, and then mel- 
lows into understanding, is the love that, while 
it peoples the earth, nevertheless cares for the 
earth, and gives birth to the great things. To 
my mind this love is never as strong as the love 
of parent for child, which will dare all and do all ; 
which is constantly reasonable and thoughtful, 
and in which there is never a selfish thought. The 
wife may "love" her husband because he is good 
to her ; because he makes it easy for her ; because 
he is considerate of her ; because he is generous 
with her ; because he is an ideal to her. The hus- 
band may love the wife for reasons that are akin 
to her reasons for loving him. But the love of a 



138 LETTERS TO JACK 

mother for her child is not because of the child's 
strength or power to help her, but rather because 
of its very weakness and its very helplessness and 
its very powerlessness. Therefore, to me the 
thought has often come that love is a growth 
passing, after a stage of preparation, through 
three epochs : the epoch of preparation, the epoch 
of passion, the epoch of understanding, and then, 
at its best, spending itself, and becoming there- 
fore real, on what it produces. 

I do not know if I have made myself clear to 
you. I fear I have not, because I am not sure 
that I have made myself clear to myself ; for the 
hardest thing that one can do is to express, even 
to oneself, the things that are of the spirit and 
the soul, and true love is of the spirit and the soul. 

Feeling as I do about this supremely impor- 
tant matter, I would warn you to mistrust your- 
self ; for youth is impressionable. It is youth 
that hurries through the woods to gather wild 
flowers, while age only walks thoughtfully 
through the gardens. A baby is attracted by a 
shining ornament and a youth is attracted by 
bright eyes. Both may be fools in their own way. 
To abandon oneself to love without any thought 
of the course that it inevitably must take, is an 
act of folly. But you say, " Perhaps it cannot be 
helped?" It can be helped, for even love is no 
excuse to lay aside reason and religion. Eeligion 



LOVE 139 

says that love is placed upon earth for a good 
purpose, to replenish the earth. When it is un- 
derstood that this is the purpose, reason steps in 
and then love will go to the great goal which is its 
best and purest, to the foot of the Throne. 



XIV 
THE PLAIN MAN 

Some people have been born to the purple; but 
they never wore it as if it fitted them. 



The dress of a man or woman is ugly in propor- 
tion as it gets away from the natural. 



Saints are not exactly different; they are only 
right and normal. 



THE PLAIN MAN 

My dear Jack: 

For common sense, I commend you to get ac- 
quainted with the sayings of Abraham Lincoln. 
Most of them are delightful; some of them I 
keep with me always. Lincoln divides the human 
race very truly, and very quaintly, into two sec- 
tions, one of which, the larger, comprises the 
" plain" people. It is not necessary for him to 
label the rest. ' ' God, ' ' he said, "must have loved 
the plain people; He made so many of them." 
It is not necessary to be poor to be enrolled in 
the ranks of the plain people. There are many 
rich men who never had the desire to move out 
of the class of plain men. Some people have 
been born to the purple, but they never wore it 
as if it fitted them. The best of kings have re- 
mained " plain" men. Saint Louis, King of 
France, was the simplest of men. The most 
highly educated of the world have had " plain" 
men in plenty amongst them. This letter is to 
counsel you not even to attempt to be anything 
but a " plain man". 

It is time we stopped using the word " plain 

143 



>3 



144 LETTERS TO JACK 

as a reproach. It is true that to be plain means 
to be common ; but it is not true that to be com- 
mon means to be ugly. More often the opposite 
is true ; for that which is plain is usually well 
ordered, and beauty is essentially an attribute of 
what is well ordered — a result of things existing, 
or being placed, so as to conform with fixed and 
proper standards. The plain things are usually 
the very beautiful things. 

Contrary to the ideas of many, it is true that 
one must be a plain man or woman to be beauti- 
ful. No rouge can equal the tint of ordinary red 
blood showing through healthy skin. No trim- 
ming of the hair was ever half so beautiful as 
unbound tresses, flowing and free. Physical 
beauty in man does not concern itself with his 
gaudy clothes. What ugliness there is in his 
form is accounted for by what is abnormal in it. 

The dress of a man or woman is ugly in pro- 
portion as it gets away from the natural. It is 
natural for women who usually stay in the home 
to throw over them garments made with little 
cutting, falling in graceful folds about them, such 
as the dresses and cloaks that were worn by the 
ancient Celtic and British women. The female 
form lends itself to this graceful draping, and 
women do not ordinarily live where the cold 
winds buffet and chill them. As the fashion in 
women's dress moves away from this simplicity 



THE PLAIN MAN 145 

and plainness, it becomes ugly, because it offers 
the abnormal for admiration. Too much decora- 
tion succeeds only in concealing beauty. On a 
feast day the artistic Italian may tolerate bunt- 
ing and drapery on the walls of St. Peter's; but 
he would not like St. Peter's were the draping 
and bunting to be left there permanently. 

The plain man or woman thinks plain, normal 
thoughts. The cultivated orchard produces large, 
ruddy and beautiful apples, but such apples are 
only normal. They were produced by getting 
back to the rule and away from the exception. 
Wormy apples are the exception. Farmers who 
habitually have been neglecting their orchards 
have become accustomed to exceptions. But the 
normal apple, the plain apple, is always the 
beautiful one. 

To live a plain life fits the plain man and 
woman, and keeps them plain. To live otherwise 
spoils the lines of the figure, and makes them 
abnormal and ugly. Obesity is a sign of overeat- 
ing or disease. To eat when hungry, to drink 
when thirsty, to rest when tired, these are plain 
actions that produce results in physical beauty. 
To feed the soul as honestly with plain spiritual 
food as the body is fed with what it needs, is to 
produce the normal goodness, the soul's natural 
and beautiful state. Saints are not exactly dif- 
ferent; they are only right and normal 



146 LETTERS TO JACK 

It is not remarkable that he who lives in a 
palace and eats nightingales' tongues should be 
forced sometimes to fly to a hut in the woods or 
on the shore, and eat only what he can fish or 
shoot. His action is the natural protest of the 
plain man which the palace is killing in him, 
against the ugliness of his condition. It is a 
temporary assumption of control by the normal, 
and a temporary defeat for the ugly. 

It is not to be wondered at that the plain man 
is loved. We shiver and frown at his opposite, 
when we shiver and frown at the dandy or the 
ragamuffin. We like the middle because it is the 
normal. We honor it even without noticing that 
we do so. The things we notice are often the 
things which disgust us ; and sometimes the dis- 
gust is at ourselves, because we have noticed, or 
were enticed by them. The plain man is the 
world's man; so he always has been; but he 
also and always has been God's man; for what 
God hates in the world is what the world has 
done against His Will with itself and with His 
children. What God made was and is good. He 
loves the good. Yes! He loves the plain man 
as Lincoln said He did ; for thus He made him, 
and thus He wills he should remain. 



XV 
THE ENTHUSIAST 

By the Enthusiast have nations been born and by 
his hand have tyrants died. He has deluged the 
world with blood ; but he has planted and watered 
the peace that gives life and plenty. He has done 
evil; but, too, he has loved justice. His name is a 
curse; but it has also been honored as a blessing. 
. . . He has crushed out the name of God, yet he 
has paused again to invoke it. 



THE ENTHUSIAST 

My dear Jack: 

Last night you said something about " Enthu- 
siasm for one's work", and being an "Enthusi- 
ast". It set me thinking. I have heard so many 
things of the kind that I really must tell you 
today what I think of the Enthusiast ; for I am 
his friend and admirer, but not the defender of 
his faults. You can only copy him if you are a 
genius. If you are not that, you are, however, 
in the happy position of being able to work up 
to the good and leave the bad alone. 

Who is the Enthusiast? He is the conqueror 
and the king, the leader in every movement, 
whether good or bad, the blazer of every trail, 
the pathfinder into every jungle. His keel has 
furrowed the unknown seas, his alpenstock has 
marked the sides of every mountain and glacier, 
his spade has dug deepest into the earth, his mind 
has tried to encompass every problem, his zeal 
has converted millions to truth or perverted mil- 
lions to error. Today he soars on wings into the 
air, seeking new outlets to his unquenchable fury 
of action. He has done all of the world's things 

149 



150 LETTERS TO JACK 

yet done that were worth doing. He is Progress 
personified. 

Yet, over the desert his bones have whitened. 
The kindly moss has covered his dead body in the 
great forests, to hide the ugliness of its decay. 
The sea gives up neither its treasures nor its dead 
— so he is sleeping forever in the peaceful depths. 
He has encrimsoned the world's battlefields, and 
has found graves deep down where men take gold 
and silver from the bowels of the earth. Yet he 
lives and never learns. It is well it should be so. 
Progress would cease were he to think too deeply 
and learn too much from what he has suffered. 

By the Enthusiast have nations been born and 
by his hand have tyrants died. He has deluged 
the world with blood; but has planted and wa- 
tered the peace that gives life and plenty. He has 
done evil; but, too, he has loved justice. His 
name is a curse ; but it has also been honored as 
a blessing. They have hanged him in chains to 
the gallows ; and they have wept and would not 
be consoled, because they had led him forth to 
die. Yet he has often won more in dying thus 
than life could have given him. His eye has 
dropped tears for misery and has shot fires of joy 
for destruction. He burned the precious books of 
Alexandria, but gathered the Vatican's treasures 
of literature and art. He has swept whole tribes 
from a continent, but behold that continent be- 



THE ENTHUSIAST 151 

comes a new world to beckon the old onward and 
upward to the heights of achievement. He has 
crushed out the name of God, yet has he paused 
again to invoke it. 

Of all men he is the most loved and the most 
hated ; but he is hated of tener than he is loved, for 
the world must forget much about him to love him 
at all ; must forget especially that he trampled on 
some of its cherished ideals. While he lives the 
Enthusiast must be disliked, because he is, of 
necessity, both thoughtless and selfish. He thinks 
too deeply of his work to realize his own lack of 
thought for others. He is too bound up with the 
problems that fill his own brain, to worry about 
either the problems or the cares of his neighbors. 
Therefore does the world think him selfish. But 
he is ultimately neither thoughtless nor selfish. 
He has the record of his world benefactions for 
centuries, to prove his love for his kind ; and his 
record of unceasing suffering and pain, extend- 
ing just as far back into history, to prove his 
disinterestedness. 

It has been charged that the Enthusiast has 
been loyal only to his own dreams. But one can- 
not have a dream at all, without the substantial 
upon which to base it. The baby's dreams are of 
the smiles it has seen on mother's face, which 
is his entire universe; but these it has actually 
seen. The Enthusiast has seen his world, has had 



152 LETTERS TO JACK 

his impressions, has shaped his thoughts. It is 
on these his dreams are founded and his ends 
directed. He is loyal to the great things. 

The Enthusiast is not alone a dreamer. He is 
the world worker, who labors not for pay, but for 
the very love of it. Money could never have made 
a Columbus, and only a Columbus could have dis- 
covered a continent. Civilization would be with- 
out masterpieces and mastermen if the Enthusi- 
ast were bound by the laws of labor unions. His 
work sets itself no time limit and permits none 
to be set for it. His strength comes and goes. It 
is fed by fires from the soul that burn only fit- 
fully. He works while they burn and then he 
produces. He stops when the fires smoulder. 
His dreams are the fires which give him strength 
for action. 

The real Enthusiast belongs to no nation, but 
to all nations, since his work is for all. The good 
he does, the discoveries he makes, the evil he 
causes, all belong to the world at large, which 
cannot avoid the consequence of having produced 
him, whether good or bad. The disgrace of a 
Robespierre belongs to Prance, but the Revolu- 
tion he fostered shed the world's blood and is still 
the world's problem. Voltaire went farther than 
Sans Souci and Frederick the Great with his cyn- 
ical friendship. The circles shot out by his fall 
into the waters of doubt have long ago touched 



THE ENTHUSIAST 153 

even the Arctic. Michelangelo's genius is not 
only the adornment of Italy, but the inspiration 
of all nations. O'Connell liberated two peoples: 
his own from injustice; and the enemies of his 
own from the slavery of being tyrants. 

The Enthusiast cannot die while the earth 
lives ; since every generation must have him to 
depend upon for the step in advance which God 
seems to destine each generation to take. 

To have " Enthusiasm for one's work" is good : 
but it is not pleasant to be a real Enthusiast. It 
is a pain. 



XVI 

THE CONSERVATIVE 

The Conservative is not usually the one who pro- 
duces great results ; but he is nevertheless the one 
who enables others to produce them. 



The Conservative knows men better than they 
know themselves, and loves them more wisely. 



THE CONSERVATIVE 

My dear Jack: 

I had to smile when Billy said he was a " liber- 
tine". Billy does not know what " libertine" 
means. If he had known he would have hesi- 
tated about claiming such a title. Billy meant to 
say that he was a " liberal", — in things political. 
He is; but Billy is a " liberal" in other things 
as well. So far as the " other things", at least, 
are concerned, so much the worse for Billy. 
Don't mistake my meaning: I am not opposed to 
all liberalism; only to the dangerous kind that 
makes liberalism an engine of destruction. There 
is a true and a false liberalism. That which 
takes no heed of eternal principles is the false 
kind. 

Liberalism is busy today flinging bricks at the 
Conservative. He deserves a few of them, but 
not all. As a matter of fact, he deserves more 
bouquets than bricks. He has done his work 
better than men realize. The Conservative is not 
usually the one who produces great results, but 
he is nevertheless the one who enables others to 
produce them. He is the watchman who guards 

157 



158 LETTERS TO JACK 

the foundation of the building ; the treasurer of 
all the real riches gathered in bygone ages, and 
which, wisely used, give new riches to the pres- 
ent, and will give them also to the future. He 
is the keeper of the granary wherein lie stored 
the seeds from which the world's next crop of 
ideas, inventions and facts will spring. He is the 
unappreciated Joseph to thousands of spend- 
thrift Pharaohs ; but he wears no outward crown 
in proof of it, and holds no scepter of public 
honor.. He is the power behind every throne that 
is firm upon its base. He is the port of refuge 
for every storm-driven ship. Without him there 
could be no progress ; because there would be no 
tools preserved with which to labor, no principles 
upon which to rest, no weapons with which to 
fight truth's battles. The armories and maga- 
zines of intellectual warfare are in his care; the 
fact that he hesitates and considers long before 
he lends the keys, is rather a proof of his sagacity 
than a reproach to his slowness. It is well for the 
world that the Conservative is thus hard to con- 
vince and thus slow to act. He has been, and is, 
largely responsible for a diminishing in the 
world's stock of regrets. He scarcely knows the 
meaning of "it might have been"; and for him 
there is no Past Conditional tense. He alone can 
say, "it was"; but he alone never says, except of 
God, "it will be". 



THE CONSERVATIVE 159 

It is the Conservative who comes upon the bat- 
tlefield when the fight is done, and the bodies of 
the rash lie with glassy eyes uplifted to the unre- 
lenting heavens. He it is who gathers up all that 
is useful for another fight, and stores it away 
until it is needed. It is he who goes to the council 
tent, and there takes the fruits of victory or 
defeat. It is he who treasures the lessons, 
whether they be in the form of tests of new ex- 
plosives, the folly of entering into a war unpre- 
pared, or the crime of entering into it at all. 
When others think that all is lost, he quietly has 
laid away some spoils at least; and knows that 
even out of a rout something always can be 
gained. Though he did not face battle, yet he 
alone faces its consequences — more deadly oft- 
times than the fight itself. 

The Conservative is thought to be the smallest 
and narrowest of men. It is partially true, but 
in his seeming defects are his uses and his victo- 
ries. He is small, but one sees better from the 
small end of a telescope. He is narrow, but the 
path of Horatius to glory was a bridge only a 
few feet wide. He does look backward, but be- 
hind are the things that justify looking ahead. 
His foresight is not great, but it is the careful 
start that makes a glorious finish possible. 

It is not a reproach to the Church that in her 
fold the Conservative reigns supreme. Cen- 



160 LETTERS TO r JACK 

turies have tried to oust him from this strong- 
hold, but he has beaten the centuries. So the 
Present and Future do not refuse an admiring 
salute with the sword, before they join the Past 
in thrusting at him. But they will thrust in vain, 
for he knows his ground. He has lived to see and 
study men, and he has not learned to scorn but to 
love them. He knows them better than they 
know themselves, and loves them more wisely. 
He watches their weaknesses, while noting their 
enthusiasms ; and from both he draws the good, 
and thus wisely saves the future of the race. 
He has seen centuries which worshipped many 
gods and all of them shameless ; but he has man- 
aged to keep the fire alight on the altar of the 
One who alone is Truth. He has witnessed 
past centuries drop their books — sacred and pro- 
fane — to grasp the sword and couch the lance. 
But he gathered up and kept the books — Bible 
and classics. We owe their preservation to him. 
He saw Art fall into the dust to die, but he 
quietly supplied the materials for its revival. 
He heard a world cease to sing, but saved melo- 
dies that the world might sing again. These 
and all else that he has saved may be arrayed 
against him, but he understands and hugs his 
treasures closer, while watching for what he 
can add to them from the new and more splen- 



THE CONSERVATIVE 161 

did mistakes of this new and more splendid 
present. 

The century is learning fast while the treasures 
of the Conservative grow apace. What shall the 
future say of him ? It will speak of him in terms 
of praise, but it will speak as of one dead. It 
will enshrine his memory, but enshrine it only 
as a memory. It will build a mighty mausoleum 
to him, really believing that he lies beneath it. 
It will sing of him, imagining that the song is a 
threnody. It will say that, under God, Religion 
owes to him its purity, Science its discoveries, 
Music its inspiration, Art its models, and Oratory 
its ancient fire ; all the while thinking of him as 
one of the great departed. But he will not be 
dead even when the world thinks that the millen- 
nium has come. The millennium will yet be far 
away — as far as Heaven, which is where the 
Gate of Death ends the Long Road. Yes, the 
Conservative shall always be living, and the very 
praise the Future will unite to give him, shall be 
but a new form of the old battle he has always 
fought, and which he must fight to the end ; while 
the world shall always remain his servant, and 
all ages his debtor. 



XVII 
CRITICISM 

Mild and pleasant criticisms might accomplish 
something; but not enough to justify their exist- 
ence. 



The gossiping neighbors of a country village have 
a great deal more to do with keeping the village 
highly moral, and filling the churches on Sunday, 
than they get credit for. 



The less criticism you get the harder will be your 
road to success. 



CRITICISM 
My dear Jack: 

The most irritating thing in the world is a 
toothache; but I saved nearly all my teeth by 
heeding the first twinging warning of that kind. 
The only tooth I lost forever went because I too 
long neglected such a warning, using palliatives 
for the pain rather than a prompt remedy 
for the disorder that caused it. Criticisms are 
like toothaches — unpleasant, even painful; irri- 
tating, even maddening; but they help us and 
they help us very materially. If there possibly 
could be such a thing as a pleasant toothache, 
I think that the object of the infliction could 
not be attained. It is only natural that we 
should ask why a warning of decay might not 
be given without the pain; but would we heed 
such a warning? It usually takes a hard-grip- 
ping toothache to drive us to the dentist's chair, 
where we should have gone months before. It 
is the same way with criticisms. There are no 
pleasant ones, and I am glad of it, though I have 
suffered my share of the pain of them. Mild 
and pleasant criticisms might accomplish some- 
thing, but not enough to justify their existence. 

165 



s 



166 LETTERS TO JACK 

There are, however, toothaches of all degrees 
of painf ulness ; and there are critics of the same 
kind. Some critics are vicious ; some are gentle. 
Both have their uses. They all make lis stop 
and think. If there were no critics in the world, 
there would be little, if any, progress ; and very 
much sin. The gossiping neighbors of a country 
village have a great deal more to do with keep- 
ing the village highly moral, and filling the 
churches on Sunday, than they really get credit 
for ; and, while gossiping hurts the gossiper, it 
is one of those evils which God confounds by 
drawing good out of them. More than once the 
fear of criticism has kept young people from 
rushing into danger. It is wise always to be on 
the alert to catch every breath of criticism di- 
rected your way, because it is always well to see 
yourself as other people see you. 

The right way to receive criticism is as you 
receive a toothache — suffer it, but do not suffer 
it any longer than you have to. Remove the 
cause, if you can, and remove it quickly; thus 
will you draw your good out of the evil. As a 
man rarely thinks of a toothache after it ends, 
in the joy of having gotten rid of it, so hasten 
yourself to forget criticism and the critic, that 
you may not lose the good both have done you. 

I counseled you to be sensitive to criticism; 
but what I meant, was to make only your ears 



CRITICISM 167 

sensitive to it. I did not mean that vou should 
make your heart so. Steel yourself against crit- 
icism. Be prepared to turn it into an advantage, 
but never let it make you bitter; and, above all, 
never let it make you revengeful. Critics are 
not always enemies ; but much that I said of the 
critic applies to the enemy. A mean critic is 
not worth being revenged upon. The critic who 
is not mean is usually quite honest and worth 
attention. One of the differences between criti- 
cisms and toothaches lies in the fact that w r e 
ought, within reason, to go out looking for criti- 
cisms. No man can be successful without his 
critics ; and therefore even the saints had them. 
No one profited more by criticisms than did 
these saints. Your school days were made up 
of hour after hour of criticism. Your business 
career will be the same. You will be criticised 
until the day you die. The less criticism you get, 
the harder will be your road to success. 

But fear much to criticise others. You may 
get yourself into the position of being hardened 
to criticism, and even of welcoming it; but do 
not presume that others will have been success- 
ful in like manner. The average man does not 
take kindly to criticism ; therefore, for your own 
personal comfort, if for no other reason, give 
your opinion when it is asked and not before. 

I am afraid that the most sensitive people to 



168 LETTERS TO JACK 

criticism are Catholics. The reasons for this are 
many, but one in particular : Catholics know the 
perfection of the divine side of the Church, and 
instinctively conclude that all criticism of her 
is unfounded. They forget that there is a human 
side to the Church as well as a divine side, and 
that the human side needs criticism. This, our 
peculiar sensitiveness, extends to everything that 
is Catholic. Taught by bitter experience, we 
are always looking for insults; and we conse- 
quently often imagine them where there are none. 
We too frequently fail to allow for inherited 
prejudices, and above all for a very natural 
frailty in ourselves — the frailty that comes out 
of our very strength. A man who has outstand- 
ing ability above all other men in some branch 
of endeavor, is likely to think that he cannot be 
very weak in anything. For example, an ex- 
tremely wealthy man is a miracle if he recog- 
nizes his own follies. He is flattered and fawned 
upon until he thinks he is a demigod. It is easy 
then for the astute time-server to catch him on 
the weak side; to the time-server's gain. The 
trouble is that the rich man has been ignoring 
criticisms, or has bought off his critics. Catholics 
are very much like that. The very perfection 
of the divine side of the Church is their weak- 
ness in the face of criticisms of the human side. 
It is no attack against our faith, for example, 



CRITICISM 169 

to have the flaws in our educational system 
pointed out. There is really no reason why we 
should be sensitive if we are told of lapses in 
the conduct of some individuals, or body of them. 
It does not really hurt us if we are truthfully 
told that our social works are too much neglected. 
We ought to listen to and profit by these things. 
A professor of Sociology told me a few days ago, 
that it is refreshing to meet a lot of non- Catholic 
social workers at gatherings where all are 
brought together for discussion. "They go at 
each other hammer and tongs, ' ' he said. ' ' They 
attack, defend and attack again. I never enjoy 
myself so much as at one of these meetings. Why 
can't we do it? It would benefit us." The rea- 
son we can't do it is because we are too sensitive 
to criticism. We have gotten into the habit of 
defending the Church at all risks, and doing it 
at prices we cannot afford to pay. Let us not 
be too sensitive to such criticisms. After all, we 
must see our faults in order to correct them. 

Though I know that, in the majority of cases, 
personal criticisms injure the one who makes 
them, and benefit the one who receives them, 
nevertheless I say : Cod bless the critics. They 
stimulate enough to keep us moving onward and 
upward. They impede just enough to prevent 
our speeding too fast. They irritate just enough 
to make us careful. They sting just enough to 



170 LETTERS TO JACK 

make us. watchful. They are a constant invita- 
tion to the practise of humility, and a consequent 
antidote to pride. Cherish your critics — and to 
the same degree that I advised you to cherish 
your enemies. 



XVIII 
HATRED 

What the confusion of tongues did in scattering 
humanity, the gospel of hatred would have done 
later; but in blood and tears, and with the sacri- 
fice of thousands. 



No reputation is fortified against hatred, and no 
personal worth can save entirely from its venom. 



If you must hate, then hate hatred. 



HATRED 

My dear Jack: 

The chum you brought to dinner last Sunday 
said that he "just hated" an old friend of his 
because he thought he had done him a wrong. If 
you love your chum show him this letter ; and if 
you love yourself read it carefully and take its 
counsels to heart. 

The Gospel of Christ is a gospel of love. It 
is an outspoken gospel, since it has been preached 
everywhere. But there is another gospel. It is 
the gospel of evil, that I call the gospel of hatred. 
It is a gospel of silence, for it is guarded in the 
heart rather than spoken with the lips, — a gospel 
which too many accept, knowing what it is ; yet 
which many accept, too, without knowing. Those 
who accept it most freely are those most anx- 
ious to tell themselves that they repudiate it. 

The gospel of hatred has its place in the history 
of mankind. It was born in the first generation 
of the race, but with Cain, not with Adam. Fallen 
as was the first man, he could not fall so far as 
that, since he could not so completely forget the 
direct Divine handiwork in him. But the world 
needed only two additions to its population to 

173 



174 LETTERS TO JACK 

bring the gospel of hatred to the earth: one to 
excel, and one to realize that he had been excelled. 
It is a testimony to the power of the gospel of 
hatred that its first fruit on earth was murder, in 
one of murder's vilest forms, — fratricide. 

Once born, the gospel of hatred lived on the 
rivalries of men who battled for gain, and the 
vanities of women who battled to please the win- 
ner. It spread like a pestilence over the earth, 
so that not even a deluge could drown it. It 
entered the Ark with Noah's sons, and came out 
of it, like the other beasts, on Ararat. What the 
confusion of tongues did in scattering humanity, 
the gospel of hatred would have done later, but in 
blood and tears, and the sacrifice of thousands. 
It was the gospel that swept Troy to ruin; but 
fastened itself firmly on the necks of her con- 
querors to their own ruin later on. It marched 
with Sesostris out of Egypt and Alexander out 
of Macedonia. It mixed for Socrates his cup of 
poison, and stuck a needle through the once elo- 
quent tongue of the dead Cicero. It stabbed 
Caesar in irony before Pompey 's Statue ; burned 
Rome, under its devotee, Nero; and then extin- 
guished the Empire in the fury of northern 
revenge. 

The gospel of hatred has filled the army of 
martyrs. It gathered the stones that killed Ste- 
phen, beheaded Paul at the Three Fountains, and 



HATRED 175 

crucified Peter on the Capitolian Hill. It 
Iragged Joan of Arc, innocent, pure and sweet 
is a lily, to the fire lighted in Rouen's market 
3lace, and sounded the depths of injustice in the 
execution of More on Tower Hill. Why not, when 
t had spit upon Christ in the Court of Caiphas, 
oaded Him with stripes and buffets and a Cross, 
ind let Calvary stand in history as a never-to-be- 
? orgotten name for all that human malignity 
>,ould do? 

The gospel of hatred, once accepted, degrades 
nan to the level of the brute. One by one, it 
quenches in him every generous thought and im- 
Dulse and renders barren that spot in his soul 
vhereon they grew. It hardens hearts against 
;he appeal of affliction and steels them against 
;he ecstasy of pure love. It blinds the eyes to 
/irtue and goodness, but opens them wide to all 
:hat is ugly and full of sin. It closes the ears to 
;he call of mercy, but makes them keen for the 
j ,ry of revenge. It shuts the hand tight over the 
?oin of charity, but stretches it out to pay for 
icts of plunder and murder. In the poor, it 
nakes poverty sordid and miserable. In the rich, 
t cultivates flaunting show, as naked before God 
is it is lavish before men. 

In the wake of the gospel of hatred follows 
3lind injustice, against which there is neither 
ippeal nor hope in this world. No reputation is 



176 LETTERS TO JACK 

fortified against it, and no personal worth can 
save entirely from its venom. The king has been 
dragged from the throne to the headsman's block 
at its order. The legislator has felt the assassin's 
steel in his breast, and knew that the gospel of 
hatred had inspired his killing. But the peasant, 
also, has been driven from his cabin, to be lashed 
to death before his own children; while babies 
have been carried on the points of bayonets, be- 
cause men having power had accepted this gospel 
of horror. It was the gospel of hatred that Ma- 
dame Roland should have blamed on the scaffold, 
even though the crime was done "in liberty's 
name ' '. 

To civil and religious liberty no enemy has been 
so strong, because no enemy is so insidious. The 
gospel of hatred creeps almost at once into the 
heart of the conqueror toward the conquered, 
whispering that he himself is of superior clay, 
and the subdued but the dust beneath his feet. 
Thus does it add venom to the sting of the lash 
and weight to the shackles. 

In a nation the gospel of hatred divides citizens 
so that, when Power falls to one side it sends 
hatred to the other; but always double hatred 
from those who rule to those who are ruled. Self 
interest is then its spouse and tyranny its 
offspring. 

But greatest of all is the evil which follows the 



HATRED 177 

acceptance of the gospel of hatred amongst 
friends, for it kills all friendship. It is most ma- 
lignant toward those who have shown the greatest 
generosity. By preference, it strikes those who 
should be loved most, and pursues most relent- 
lessly those who have been kindest. 

The gospel of hatred has covered the world 
with destruction and has buried millions, inno- 
cent and guilty, in the ruins. It stands as the 
most convincing of all arguments for an Eternal 
Justice; because wrongs cannot always go un- 
righted; and the sods of the grave, alas! cover 
millions of wrongs that call for a righting beyond 
the power of men. 

For God's dear sake, never say that you hate 
anybody. Pear lest every little dislike is the be- 
ginning of a hatred. If you must hate, then hate 
hatred. It and sin are the only things you may 
hate with safety. 



XIX 
SILENCE 

An appearance of gravity and wisdom easily 
deceives and easily fastens incompetence to high 
places. 



The Oracles of Apollo were wisest in their silence ; 
and their race has not yet passed from the earth. 



Most of the really wise silent men have been taken 
for fools; and most of the silent fools have been 
taken for wise men. 



SILENCE 
My dear Jack: 

You remember that a few evenings ago you 
met three gentlemen in my company. On the 
way home you remarked about one of them: 
"He must be a smart man, because he knows how 
to keep his mouth shut." The remark was 
rather commonplace, for nine out of every ten 
would have made it, since the gentleman in ques- 
tion looked wise and said nothing for the greater 
part of the evening. You must have noticed, 
however, that, at one period of the conversation, 
he broke loose and talked on a subject that had 
very little to do with the general trend of inter- 
est. Perhaps you did not also notice that he was 
the one who dragged that subject in, literally by 
the heels. He was very brilliant while he held 
us to that topic, but when it was exhausted, he 
again relapsed into silence and resumed his ap- 
pearance of deep thought. 

I quite agree with your idea regarding some 
silent men, but I do not believe that silence always 
indicates learning or ability. If I had any right 
to judge the gentleman whom you admired, 
merely by what I saw and heard of him a few 

181 



182 LETTERS TO JACK 

evenings ago, I would be inclined to say that lie 
is one of a class smart enough to know the value 
of silence, and to assume it for effect or a lack 
of knowledge. An appearance of gravity and 
wisdom easily deceives and easily fastens incom- 
petence to high places. There are today, as there 
have been in the past, many silent fools who gov- 
ern wise men, but the wise men were not quite 
wise enough to hold their tongues. The cheapest 
and easiest way to unearned advancement and 
undeserved power is the way of silence, especially 
if it is made impressive by a show of sternness. 
In every country village you will find a physician 
whom the people think is the " greatest doctor 
of them all if he would only let rum alone". I 
used to make it my business to get acquainted 
with these wonderful geniuses, and I always 
found that those who did not know enough "to 
let rum alone", were excellent at leaving the 
materia medica alone. So, in every village I have 
found men who never speak until they can direct 
the conversation and monopolize it, and who 
never do that until they can get it into a channel 
familiar to them through a judicious selection of 
reading from an encyclopedia the day before. 
There was one wise-looking and silent old chap 
whom I knew very well, in a town in which I was 
pastor. He used to meet me daily on the street 
outside the Post Office ; and he had a new subject 



SILENCE 183 

for conversation at every meeting. He intro- 
duced it and talked on it. It was a topic nobody 
else would ever dream of taking up. I confess 
that I used to be impressed at the old man's in- 
formation about strange and outlandish things; 
until one day, in order to verify a statement he 
had made, I consulted the International Encvclo- 
pedia, and behold, I found my wise friend's dis- 
course almost word for word. After that I 
reduced him to silence by diplomatically refusing 
to discuss any subject he introduced. He dropped 
my acquaintance. An advantage this sort of 
silent man has is that, when obliged to retreat 
behind the barriers of his taciturnity, he looks 
wiser in his dignified silence than during his 
illuminating flashes of borrowed knowledge. 
Men do not always understand that such a person 
is like one of these little pocket electric-lights run 
on a small storage battery, with a tiny lamp set 
in a strong reflector. He gives out every ray 
that is in him for the instant that he dares to 
shine, but there is little current back of the light 
bulb. 

It is true, nevertheless, that such a silent man 
is often unusually successful, probably because 
the rest of mankind is not in his class. The rea- 
son is, that most men are suspicious of themselves 
and mistrust their own judgment, though they do 
not like to own to the fact. Deep down in their 



184 LETTERS TO JACK 

hearts they wonder at their own success and their 
own progress. They are painfully aware of their 
shortcomings, and full of surprise that these 
shortcomings have not been noticed by their fel- 
lows. Consequently they are always ready to be 
impressed by others who are different — and the 
different man is the silent man. But he is ad- 
mired too often for what he is not, for what his 
occasional flashes lead men to think him to be. 
These occasional flashes favor him as an unex- 
pected sound intensifies the stillness of the desert. 
The higher the place such a man holds, the more 
other men think he is fitted for it, since he does 
not need to talk to show his wisdom or to conceal 
his ignorance. The Oracles of Apollo spoke rarely 
and then but few words. They were thought to 
possess divine wisdom, but the Oracles of Apollo 
were wisest in their silence, and their race has 
not yet passed from the earth. 

I have come to mistrust the silent man. He is 
dangerous. It is in silence that plots are hatched 
and evil concocted. It is in silence that hates are 
nurtured and grudges wax fat. He who speaks 
little to his kind speaks a great deal to himself, 
and soon begins to admire the company he keeps. 
As admiration for himself ripens, disgust for 
others grows ; and the result is a harmful selfish- 
ness. The distance between selfishness and hatred 
is only a difference of time — the time between 



SILENCE 185 

the ripening of the seed and its taking root in 
the soil. 

But a minority of silent men are truly great. 
They are those who enter into silence as the High 
Priest entered into the Holy of Holies, as Moses 
entered on the sacred ground about the Burn- 
ing Bush. It is out of their silence that great 
messages come, that noble inspirations to high 
and holy thoughts proceed. In the desert the 
cenobites lived in silence with all the hosts of 
heaven for company. In the silence some men 
dwell with a world of their own about them, 
happy in it, and never wanting to leave it; but 
snatching out of it every now and then some great 
or beautiful thing, to fling it into that other world 
in which the rest live, as a treasure from a land 
so many may never enter. 

Not everybody can know the real beauty and 
meaning of that Song of the Mystic I already 
quoted; but, reading it, everybody can feel 
vaguely that it would be a desirable thing to be 
able to sing it oneself. There is a poetry that 
never measures a verse and never needs to ; but 
it is all written in the Valley of Silence, on sheets 
that are stained with the tears of disappointment, 
because words can tell so little of the feelings 
that are in the heart. There are orations whose 
force comes not from their beauty and depth of 
thought and wonder of diction, but from the 



186 LETTERS TO JACK 

wealth they cannot express, yet always imply. 
There is a music that the old notes cannot render, 
but which seems to have back of it strange 
harmonies, which some hear and to which others 
are deaf ; which are clear today but tomorrow we 
shall not be able to understand. The thinkers 
of the world have been silent men ; but men who 
could not always keep silence, because the neces- 
sity of expression came to them. Such men 
never have to push themselves upon anyone's at- 
tention. They get the ear of the world without 
trying. They never speak because they want 
others to hear. They speak because they must. 
There is something akin to inspiration in what 
they do or say. These are the silent men who are 
worth standing guard over, so as to catch every 
utterance that is forced from their lips. 

In dealing with silent men it is well to be on 
your guard, for, as I said, the majority are silent 
for a purpose. But the minority of the silent 
ones are worth attention. How shall you know 
them ? It is hard to say. Perhaps the best test 
is this: do they profit or do they lose by their 
silence ? Most of the really wise silent men have 
been taken for fools ; and most of the silent fools 
have been taken for wise men. 



DREAMERS 

"We do not need to ' ' scratch a Russian " to ' ' find 
a Tartar." We might scratch ourselves and find 
the same sort of a wild rover any time. 



So far as the eye can see, the stars were not 
placed in the heavens by rule of thumb ; but they 
are there by rule nevertheless. 



DREAMERS 

My dear Jack: 

When I praised the Enthusiast it might have 
seemed to you that I was pleading for dreamers, 
and, in a way, I was. But I was rather apolo- 
gizing than pleading. I was like the judge whom 
stern duty bid sentence a miserable wretch to 
prison; but who yet knew the extenuating cir- 
cumstances that, outside the law, made this man 
less guilty than many of his accusers. Dreamers 
have usually been themselves failures ; or unsuc- 
cessful till success meant nothing to them. If 
John Boyle O'Reilly was right in saying that 
"the dreamer lives forever but the toiler dies 
in a day," his immortality has been a good thing 
for the dreamer; for only after he has passed 
from bodily life does he actually begin to live. 
In the life of this world a salesman must have 
something to sell, something that men can see 
and touch and enjoy. So it is the hard, cold, mat- 
ter-of-fact fellow who counts for the day. The 
dreamer, the ' ' rainbow-chaser, ' ' the lovable wan- 
derer, is one of Bob Service's "men that don't 
fit in." How well he describes these men we all 
know: 

189 



190 LETTERS TO JACK 

"If they just went straight they might go far; 

They are strong and brave and true; 
But they're always tired of things that are, 

And they want the strange and new. 
They say: 'Could I find my proper groove, 

What a deep mark I would make!' 
So they chop and change, and each fresh move 

Is only a fresh mistake/' 

I am sorry, deeply sorry, for these men — and 
so are you. Why ? Because they are our kin, as 
they are kin to all the world. There is some of 
the same spirit and failing in all of us. If there 
were not we wouldn't ourselves be worth any- 
thing. But the rest of us have the spirit under 
control, or think we have. As a matter of fact, 
we sometimes discover that we have not the con- 
trol we so fondly credited to our strength of 
character. We do not need to " scratch a Rus- 
sian" to "find a Tartar." We might scratch 
ourselves and find the same sort of a wild rover 
any time. The difference between ourselves and 
the other is, while he 

"-.-.. forgets that his youth has fled, 

Forgets that his prime is past, 
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead, 

In the glare of the truth at last,' 



>> 



DREAMERS 191 

we had that searching glare on us early. The 
real difference is only in the time of the revela- 
tion. Why not love the dreamers'? We were 
once of the tribe, and there are always memories. 

But, Jack, it would be an awful calamity had 
we left that tribe and also the memories that 
bind us to it. It is the dreamer in most men that 
makes them fit for human companionship. For 
the scientific mind, I have use only in my argu- 
mentative moods ; and from the mathematician, 
' ' Good Lord, deliver me." I would walk miles 
to spend an evening with a dreamer, the less he 
"fits in" the greater my pleasure in his company ; 
while I would run the same distance from the 
fifteen minute visit of the "pure intellect." 
There never was anything but monotony in the 
squared and the concreted. God laid out no 
blocks in His universe ; may He be thanked for 
that. So far as the eye can see, the stars were 
not placed in the heavens by rule of thumb ; but 
they are there by rule nevertheless. 

There is enough worldly wisdom in avoiding 
the danger of being a dreamer, to justify one's 
trying hard to keep from drifting entirely that 
way. There is enough spiritual wisdom in law 
and order to justify suspecting one's tendency 
to dreaming. But there is also enough pure joy 
in dreaming, to assure one that dreams have a 
right to be, and dreamers a place in God's uni- 



192 LETTERS TO JACK 

verse. Our greatest fights with ourselves are not 
fights to keep from going to extremes. They are 
fights to keep in the middle ; and, at that, most 
of us have had rather indifferent success. His- 
tory records that General Wolfe murmured 
lines from Gray's Elegy on his way to the plains 
of Abraham, and said that he would rather have 
written them than take Quebec. Scratched was 
the Wolfe, and a lamb of Arcadia was found — a 
dreamer who " fitted in," and yet was gloriously 
unsatisfied. If I look at the whole world's pop- 
ulation as it now is, I cannot see a place for the 
dreamer ; but I cannot think of the world and its 
people that way. I must look at it as it was, as 
it is, and as it will be. Those who live in it now 
are but a handful of those who, at the end, will 
be written down as its citizens. The time will 
come when there shall be no dead, but a throng- 
ing multitude of the living, made up of all who 
once dwelt here on earth. Then we shall have the 
true perspective and find that, perhaps, Wolfe 
was right. 

Of one thing I feel sure : for the here and now 
it is better to "fit in," to be no dreamer, and 
to forget the rainbows. But to live in the future, 
to court the immortality of fame, to be a great 
citizen of the world in a day that stretches from 
Adam to — whom? it will prove best to have 
been one who loved rather than hated, who 



DKEAMERS 193 

dreamed rather than schemed; who prayed 
rather than preyed; who smiled in joy rather 
than frowned in anger; who looked up at the 
stars rather than fixed eyes on the earth; and 
such a one is the true dreamer. 



XXI 

OLD THINGS 

I sympathize with the man who is only the servant 
of a machine. ... I think there is a deeper rea- 
son than the question of pay for the modern strike. 



I like to see progress ; but I do not like to pay for 
it with the old ideals that first made it possible. 



Evil may be shouting in our souls constantly ; but 
it is for us to say whether or not we are to hear 
its voice. 



OLD THINGS 

My dear Jack: 

Some of my friends show a sort of mild and 
superior tolerance of what they call my " junk." 
I have to acknowledge that I am very fond of 
the things that are old — old pictures, old books, 
old prints, old china. It is not, however, be- 
cause things are old that I like them; nor yet 
because they help me get the atmosphere in which 
history may best be read ; but rather because the 
old things, nearly all of them, speak to me of 
devotion and an ideal in work that we have not 
in this age of machinery. Now, I have nothing 
against the age of machinery; in fact, I rather 
like living in these times. I never had, for ex- 
ample, any prejudices against automobiles. When 
I travel, I take advantages of modern comforts ; 
and this is the most comfortable age of the world 
for travel. Still, I constantly feel like lament- 
ing the fact that machinery has driven out the 
personal interest and devotion men used to take 
in producing things. There isn't much inspira- 
tion to be gotten out of a modern factory. I 
visited one a few weeks ago, and the composite 

197 



198 LETTERS TO r JACK 

picture I took away was distressing. It seemed 
as if one big machine, and the men around it, 
made a picture for me of the whole factory. Two 
men were engaged in mechanically picking up 
long steel bars, placing them singly in a certain 
groove, leaving each one there until a hammer 
banged holes in them, and then throwing them on 
the pile of " finished" work. The men were too 
much like the machine they attended. The head 
of the factory told me that they do nothing else 
from morning until night. The bar forms part 
of a bed; but the other parts are made in the 
same way. No individual workman in the fac- 
tory makes an entire bed. It takes two hundred 
employes, starting from the designer and wind- 
ing up with the finisher, to do that. The only 
inspiration there is in the whole factory is that 
of the designer. It seemed to me that he was 
the only man who had a chance to actually enjoy 
his work. 

You can readily see why I am sorry that the 
machine has, almost entirely, eliminated the 
workingman who could start producing some- 
thing, and finish it all by himself. Machinery 
has taken the inspiration, and therefore the 
pleasure, out of work. It is no wonder to me 
that the age of machinery is the age of labor 
troubles. I sympathize with the man who is 
only the servant of a machine. I cannot find the 



OLD THINGS 199 

heart to blame him for being dissatisfied. So I 
think there is a deeper reason than the question 
of pay for the modern strike. Without knowing 
it, the men have gotten into the state of working 
for pay alone. In the olden days there was more 
pleasure in a man's craftsmanship than in the 
money he received for it. The old workman was 
often an artist; for even when he did not have 
the skill, he had the feeling ; and he did not take 
his pleasure out of his skill, but out of his feel- 
ing. I dropped into a little shoe-shop one day 
to have a lift put upon a heel. It was quite late 
in the evening, but the shoemaker was pegging 
away. "You don't keep union hours," I re- 
marked. The old man loked up at me with a 
smile. "No," he said, "but my boy does. You 
see, Father, he works in a shoe factory, and when 
the whistle blows he stops. A man cannot take 
very much interest in stamping out soles, and 
that's what he does. I often work until ten 
o 'clock because I cannot lay my work aside. You 
wouldn't think, would you, that I could take in- 
terest enough in a pair of shoes to keep me from 
my evening paper? But I do. Now here," he 
continued, picking up a pair of shoes, "is some- 
thing I am very proud of. I made these shoes 
myself. They will last three years. The shoes 
that are turned out by the factory my son works 
in look prettier, but they will not last six months. 



200 LETTERS TO JACK 

These are honest shoes and there is honest labor 
in them. ' ' I thoroughly understood the old man, 
and I liked his point of view. I know, of course, 
that we must have factories. I would not turn 
back the hand on the clock if I could ; but at the 
same time I rejoice that there still is, and always 
will be, a demand for the things that are made in 
the old way ; not that we need these things so very 
badly, but that we need the sort of men who per- 
sist in making them. I suppose these are only 
the William Morris views I picked up from an 
occasional glance over the now defunct " Philis- 
tine." I certainly know that they are not origi- 
nal; but I am aiming at the giving of advice 
rather than at originality. 

This love for the old things that I have, con- 
cerns more than the things that I can see and 
touch. For example, I love the old spirit that, 
alas ! now seems to be passing away. Last week, 
as I was going into my office, I saw a regiment 
of soldiers marching from the railway station to 
their armory. They were returning from the 
Mexican border. The band was playing a patri- 
otic air as I walked to the curb to watch the 
regiment go by. The flags passed a minute later. 
My hat was the only one that was doffed ; and I 
could not help the fact that my eyes became a 
little dim. What astonished me was that nobody 
else seemed to get any sentiment out of the 



OLD THINGS 201 

marching men, the flags and the music. I thought 
at first that perhaps it was because I was a little 
different, since I had served with the colors in 
a very mild sort of a war. But later on, while 
going up in the elevator to my office, I knew that 
I was wrong. The people have changed. The 
curse of riches is on us and the evils of prosperity 
are our own. I was fifteen minutes at my desk 
before I could get down to work. I sat thinking 
of twenty years ago when, in the little town where 
I was pastor, I made my first patriotic address, 
before a mound erected in the cemetery, "To the 
Unknown Dead." That day there were ad- 
dresses by four or five Protestant ministers as 
well as myself. Some of these ministers were 
bigoted men, and they usually disliked me be- 
cause I was a priest ; but they did not dislike me 
that day. There was a sort of "Truce of God" 
on Memorial Day; and I never can forget the 
heartiness with which the ministers, the old sol- 
diers and the crowd received what they thought 
were most unusual sentiments from the mouth 
of a " Eomanist. ' ' Bless their poor blind hearts ! 
I think the "Eomanist" felt the occasion more 
deeply than any of them; for even prosperity 
does not stampede him ; and prosperity has stam- 
peded more than one of the men who stood with 
moist eyes about the mound that day. I like to 
see progress, but I do not like to pay for it with 



202 LETTERS TO JACK 

the old ideals that first made it possible. Prog- 
ress does not rush. It moves with dignity and 
safety. Its effect is to make good things better ; 
but it does not destroy that which is good. If a 
machine only succeeds in producing great quan- 
tities of inferior things, without even the excuse 
of giving more leisure for self -development to 
the workman, I am inclined to look doubtfully 
at the ultimate value of the machine. 

Truth is, my dear Jack, that the love for the 
old things is a response to one of those mysteri- 
ous voices that speak to us constantly from 
within and without. "Two voices there are, one 
of the Earth and one of the Sea ; each a mighty 
voice," said some poet. The poet was conserva- 
tive. There is a mighty voice also from the 
heavens ; Bob Service is a new sort of poet, but 
he has the idea: 

"Here dy the camp fire's flicker, 

Deep in my blanket curled, 
I long for the peace of the pine-gloom, 

When the scroll of the Lord is unfurled, 
And the wind and the wave are silent, 

And world is singing to world/' 

There are a myriad of lesser voices from earth, 
sea and sky, wordless whispers in our ears, speak- 
ing everywhere and always. What we call " in- 
spiration" is the message of these voices. The 



OLD THINGS 203 

highest inspiration is the Voice of God. The 
lesser inspirations are His in a way also, since 
from Him comes all good. But His Voice in 
the minor things sound through His works. 
Byron was no saint, but when he heard the 
ocean's voice, and was inspired to address to it 
his immortal eulogy: "Roll on, thou deep and 
dark blue ocean, roll," he could not help con- 
fessing God's power. The same thing happened 
when he heard the voice of St. Peter's at Rome, 
and his praise reached the heights of sublimity 
in the words: "Worthiest of God, the Holy and 
the True." Shakespeare heard the voices and 
confessed it, for to him there were "sermons in 
stones." It was fitting that the architecture of 
the Middle Ages inspired the idea of its being 
called "frozen music." 

Life is full of eloquence raised to the sublim- 
ity that moves the soul. Even life's smallest 
things have great messages, if you will only stop 
to hear them. There is nothing prosaic in life, 
if you will but attune your ear to catch the voices 
that arise out of all its movements. Even what 
men think are only "disorders," like sickness 
and death, even these speak, with a voice that 
can be understood, and their message is one of 
consolation. 

It is only when the fallen nature of mankind 
gets the upper hand that the voices from within 



204 LETTERS TO JACK 

are evil ; and it is only when these interior voices 
are evil that the voices from without are mis- 
understood or ignored. I could almost say that 
all the voices from without are good. We merely 
fail sometimes, because of what speaks within 
us, to hear them aright. If you have a perfectly 
adjusted receiver on your phonograph, the rec- 
ord will be perfect. If the receiver is wrong, 
you will get only a jumble of sounds. The pho- 
nograph will give out, not what is spoken into it, 
but what the recorder engraves on the cylinder. 
The trouble is all with the phonograph. So it 
is with us. We hear the perfect message, but, 
if we are ourselves defective, we do not record it 
as it was spoken ; and, therefore, cannot repro- 
duce it in our lives. Man's evil instincts are 
from within. The bad voices speak only out of a 
depraved nature. The whispers of unclean, of 
unworthy, desires, become louder on man's spir- 
itual ear as he neglects more ,and more the gen- 
tle warnings of what is good in him ; till, at last, 
the voice of evil is so loud that it seems to drown 
out the voice of good. But the latter is never 
drowned. If you try you may always hear it. 
There are wireless telegraph stations of such 
great electrical power that their messages of 
world wars and intrigues reach half around the 
globe. Yet, with the waves of the air filled with 
the power behind these messages, a little instru- 



OLD THINGS 205 

ment in a cottage by the sea, tuned to catch a 
lighter but more important note, answers not at 
all to the mighty currents, but flashes words of 
peace and love to its own kin. Evil may be shout- 
ing in our souls constantly ; but it is for us to say 
whether or not we are to hear its voice. 

But I have been digressing — and I am not 
sorry for it. 



XXII 
HUMILITY 

We haven't any more right to steal God's honor 
from God than to steal their money from our 
neighbors. 

If you give an advice you make a present of it to 
someone else. It no more belongs to you; then 
why should you seek glory from it? 

True humility is true dignity. 



HUMILITY 

My dear Jack: 

The book that I love and admire next to the 
Bible is the Imitation of Christ. There is a 
whole sermon in its title, for Christ is the Ex- 
emplar of mankind. To attempt even a feeble 
imitation of Him is to have one's feet set on the 
road to true success. 

One of the most insistent of Christ's good ex- 
amples was His humility before His Father ; yet 
He was one with the Father. "The Father and 
I," He said, "are one". "I have glorified Thee 
on earth; I have finished the work Thou gavest 
me to do, and now glorify Thou Me, O Father, 
with Thyself, with the glory which I had before 
the world was, with Thee." Christ knew per- 
fectly well what glory was His own, but it was 
only at the end of His earthly mission that He 
made any claim to it. It was Christ's constant 
habit to fight off glory for Himself. His humility 
was the deepest of all humility. By example He 
taught that lesson, and established the usefulness 
and need of this all-conquering virtue. You see, 
Jack, I have started this letter in a sermonizing 
sort of way. I am afraid that all my letters have, 

209 



210 LETTERS TO JACK 

in spite of myself, become half sermons. They 
have just drifted that way; and I could not help 
it. These letters unconsciously found out for 
themselves that they needed a solid basis ; hence 
the religious tone that they have adopted. 

The fact of the existence of God and our de- 
pendence upon Him is the basis of the virtue of 
humility; for we have nothing that is of our own 
making, nothing belonging to us that we can be 
proud of, save our divine ancestry. Our divine 
ancestry even is an invitation for us to be humble. 
Pride is a sort of apostasy, for it is the setting- 
up of oneself in a place that belongs to God. The 
Commandment, "Thou shalt not have strange 
gods before Me", not only hits ordinary idola- 
ters but also the proud and selfish people who 
enthrone themselves in God's place. All saints 
were very humble, and no proud man can be a 
saint. True success calls for humility. We 
haven't any more right to steal God's honor from 
God than to steal their money from our neigh- 
bors. To be vainglorious, proud and boastful is 
not only to make yourself a nuisance to all who 
know you, but it is to steal from God what be- 
longs to Him. 

The perversities of pride show a man a weak- 
ling to his fellows and lead to his ruin. I have 
known some men, for example, who are in the 
habit of constantly volunteering advice — a very 



HUMILITY 211 

despicable habit, by the way. It may be that the 
advice was entirely unnecessary, and that the vic- 
tim of it receives no information whatever from 
it; but if his action is in line with that advice, 
even though it had been previously determined 
on, long before he met the officious meddler, 
nevertheless the meddler proceeds to take all the 
credit to himself. When you hear men say : "I 
did that", "I made such and such a man", "I 
pulled this thing out of the mud", etc., etc., you 
may conclude safely that some one is trying to 
ride, through his pride and vainglory, on the 
shoulders of another. It is only a manifestation 
of foolish conceit. . 

If you give an advice you make a present of it 
to someone else. It no more belongs to you ; then 
why should you seek glory from it ? When you 
give advice and then demand the credit for any 
good that follows, your offering is merely what 
boys call an ' ' Injun 's gift ' ', — a gift that you want 
back. If you give advice keep quiet about it. It 
is best anyhow not to give it unless you are asked. 
You haven't any right to be an embarrassment to 
other people ; and ninety-nine per cent of volun- 
teered advice is a tax upon the patience and char- 
ity of those who receive it. I confess to a cordial 
dislike for the man who constantly thrusts his 
advice upon me. I may be wrong, but the con- 
viction forces itself upon me that such a man is 



212 LETTERS TO r JACK 

selfish, mean and vainglorious. He wants to 
exalt himself at my expense in most cases. If I 
take his advice, he will boast about it and act 
toward me as if I were under a perpetual obliga- 
tion. If I do not take it, he thinks me a fool. Vol- 
unteering advice is a sure way to begin to culti- 
vate a new enemy. Even when you are asked to 
give advice, do not rattle it off as if you were mas- 
ter of the subject. Hesitate about giving it, at 
least until you know it is really wanted. Then 
offer it in a very humble way. Most people who 
ask for advice really do not want it. They are 
seeking confirmation of their own opinions and 
approval of their own plans. 

It is true that no one should cultivate the 
" 'umbleness" of Uriah Heep, though there are 
plenty of people who like it in others, because 
they cannot see the falseness at the bottom of it. 
To be humble you have to feel humble, and to feel 
humble you must be to a great extent a spiritual 
person. The humbleness that comes from a sense 
of our dependence upon God is never the " 'um- 
bleness" of Uriah Heep. True humility does not 
cringe. True humility is true dignity. The hum- 
blest men I ever knew were the greatest men I 
ever knew. I never saw a more beautiful humil- 
ity than that of Pope Pius X. This sort of 
humility is very attractive, especially in youth, 
because there never is any boasting connected 



HUMILITY 213 

with it. Deeds have a habit of speaking for them- 
selves. Boastings are only the gilt wash on base 
metal. Once a friend gave me a match-case of 
silver. It was very beautiful. The engraving 
upon it was especially fine. I was not satisfied, 
so I had it plated with gold; and I spoiled it, 
because the plating smoothed over the fine marks 
of the engraving. The beauty of my match-safe 
was gone forever. Do not go about gilding your- 
self and your deeds. People often know you bet- 
ter than you know yourself. The marks of your 
own handiwork on your own soul are the marks 
of character. 

Modesty is a ticket of admission to the heart 
of all the men who are worth knowing. When 
you gain entrance to such a man's heart, the way 
is short to his intelligence. Modesty is the out- 
ward expression of honesty and well-founded 
humility. Humility does not destroy the confi- 
dence you should have in yourself. It only gives 
it a good foundation because it puts God into it ; 
and confidence is based on self-knowledge. A 
man who knows himself knows that his strength 
is greater than anything it would be possible for 
him to have made alone. It is God in us that 
strengthens us. 

I said that true humility is spiritual. It is 
more — it is spiritualizing. When one is truly 
humble, one possesses a virtue that God loves 



214 LETTERS TO JACK 

and rewards. If I had a choice of virtues I 
would select humility, because I know that it 
includes most of the others ; but it is a hard vir- 
tue to acquire. It takes patience and prayer to 
force its development in the soul. The best way 
to secure what is needed of it for daily life is 
through that form of prayer which is called 
" mental", which is meditation. Meditation 
turns the light on yourself, and shows you up 
to yourself. To acquire the virtue of humility 
it is only necessary to be honest with yourself 
when you see yourself, and carry that honesty 
out into your dealings with your fellows. 



XXIII 
INSPIRATION 

To arrive at understanding something of God's 
love for His children one must begin by under- 
standing the depths of a mother's love. 



The pleasure of doing anything for a mother is 
half in the smallness of the thing that pleases her. 



When you stop thinking of your mother, you 
usually stop thinking of what is good. 



INSPIRATION 

My dear Jack: 

In one way there is not so much difference 
between us as our ages indicate, for in one way 
we are both just boys : I with my forty-six years 
and you with your twenty. We are both boys 
to our mothers. Yours has still some justifica- 
tion for thinking of you as a boy, because you 
have not yet arrived at the age of manhood. Mine 
has not that justification ; but what are years to 
a mother ? I know my mother is always thinking 
of the old days when she looks at me. She al- 
ways will; and that is just what I want her to 
do. I want to remain a boy as long as she lives. 
It keeps her young and it makes me feel young. 

Mothers are wonderful, and become more won- 
derful to boys as the boys grow older and older. 
I never appreciated my mother as much as I do 
now; and it is a comfort for me to feel that I 
shall grow in appreciation of her. I can never 
be sufficiently grateful that God has let her stay 
so long where I can go sometimes to see her, and 
be a boy again. I know that where she is there 
is a haven of rest for me. Just to enter it for an 
hour is a relief ; for nothing enters there with me 

217 



218 LETTERS TO JACK 

but my forty-six years of continued boyhood. 
Mother has the magic wand that touches grey 
locks and makes them turn black again. 

But the great thing about mothers for boys, 
old and young, is the inspiration they seem to 
have, in infinite reserve, for all good efforts. 
When I was only a student, wavering and fear- 
ful about the future, and away from home, some- 
how my mother stayed with me, and kept me look- 
ing straight ahead. Once my wavering became 
very serious, and almost I had decided to give 
up the hard struggle of college days — and go 
back ; but I thought of my mother. I could hear 
her unspoken regrets for my lack of courage — 
and the wavering was at an end. Always does 
the thought come, when I am in danger of mak- 
ing a false step: "What will mother think?" 
I feared her displeasure once; but now I fear 
her pain. I simply could not inflict it knowingly. 
I had rather die: yes, Jack — I had rather die. 
Do you yet realize what a wealth of inspiration 
comes from the one you cherish enough to die 
rather than hurt ? 

I am no exception amongst sons. I am the 
rule. The exceptions are not entirely human. 
They are incapable of the highest and best. They 
are men to be avoided. I had rather counsel a 
girl to give up her dreams of a home and chil- 
dren, than counsel her to marry a bad son. He 



INSPIRATION 219 

who does not love his mother will never love his 
wife. 

To arrive at understanding something of 
God's love for his children one must begin by 
understanding the depths of a mother's love. 
To make a beginning of understanding God's 
mercy, we need only study mothers. The one 
thing about God that a mother cannot teach you 
is an idea of His justice. Mothers are all essen- 
tially unjust in what concerns the relations of 
their children to others. They love too much to 
be just. The scales are always tipped on the side 
of their devotion. Even their harshness is only 
assumed. It is love in another form than the 
conventional. 

If I stood in danger of a worldly dignity, the 
shallowness of which I had sounded, and conse- 
quently was far from wanting, I think it would 
be hard to refuse, because my mother might like 
it for me. She might only see her son's apparent 
advancement. Then would I need an overpour- 
ing of the grace of God. I am always fearing 
that I am too selfish to be worthy of my mother ; 
always asking if I am doing enough to show my 
gratitude and love for her. But the blessing of 
doing anything for a mother is half in the small- 
ness of the thing that pleases her. But she, — 
she is always thinking that you do too much; 
while you are worried over the fact that your best 



220 LETTERS TO r JACK 

is too little. Who else is there in the world with 
a love like that? 

Do you think that I am going to all this trouble 
of writing these letters for your sake alone ? Be 
undeceived, then. I am thinking more of the 
pleasure they will give my mother than the possi- 
ble good they may do to you. Indeed, your chief 
claim on my affection is not that you are my 
sister's son; but that you are my mother's 
grandson. 

Catholics have something in their religion that 
others sadly lack. It is the idea of a Divine 
Motherhood. In the litany of the Blessed Virgin 
there are many beautiful titles: " Mystical 
Rose," " Tower of David," "Tower of Ivory," 
"Queen of Martyrs," "Virgin Most Faithful;" 
but it is when we come to the Mother titles that 
our hearts expand: "Mother Most Pure," 
"Mother TTndefiled," "Mother Most Amiable," 
and then the all-embracing title of love ; "Mother 
of our Creator." That title gives me a near 
glimpse of God because I seem to almost touch 
His throne. Before my eyes it changes into a 
cradle; then into a seat on a Mother's lap; then 
into a cross that has wide-stretched arms. On 
Calvary the title changes again and, I whisper: 
"Mother of my Redeemer." If I became 
unfaithful, the hardest thing to forget in my 
religion would be the touch of that sorrow- 



INSPIRATION 221 

ful Mother leading me to the foot of the Re- 
deeming Cross. It was my own mother who 
first introduced me to the Mother of Jesus 
Christ. 

Jack, be a man; but to your mother never 
cease to be a boy. She is following you with the 
prayers that have no distractions because her 
whole soul is in them. A mother's prayers for 
her children are the most fervent prayers in the 
world. Do not think that she ever leaves you 
alone. She would be with you in a desert. She 
has a soul in every child, and it constantly comes 
and goes between them. She always keeps her 
influence when the other influences count for 
nothing. She has an instinctive sense of what 
is right for you. I would trust that instinct 
very far. "When you stop thinking of your 
mother, you usually stop thinking of what is 
good. 

Mothers have faults, but not to you. Mothers 
err, but yours does not. Mothers become old and 
faded, but yours remains always as you knew 
her when you played and prayed at her knee. I 
know I could be happy in Heaven without my 
mother, because I know what Heaven is : but I 
do not yet quite understand how. My father 
was a good man. I honored, revered and loved 
him, as I honor, revere and love his memory; 
but when I think of the best in him, it is always 



222 INSPIRATION 

that he knew the kind of a mother I had, and left 
me chiefly to her care. I had a feeling that when 
my father died I lost him ; living or dead, I know 
I cannot lose my mother. 



XXIV 

OPPORTUNITIES 

Nature alone is wonderful, but man often spoils 
her wonders. 

When the pleasure we get through our gifts is 
made the only thing desirable, we prostitute the 
gifts. 



Right living, doing and thinking lower down the 
net into the' sea. 



OPPORTUNITIES 

My dear Jack: 

There is a play by Maurice Maeterlinck called 
"The Blue Bird," which brought forth storms 
of criticism as well as zephyrs of praise. It is 
quite materialistic, reflecting much of its author's 
false philosophy; but at the same time it is a 
beautiful production with more than one grain 
of truth in it. Mr. Maeterlinck senses the idea 
of " vocation" for each individual human being; 
but, unfortunately, he mixes in enough fatalism 
to destroy pretty nearly every vestige of free 
will. One of the strongest scenes of the play is 
laid in that vague " shadow-land" out of which 
come the souls of humans. When the curtain 
rises on this scene, the stage is shown full of 
unborn babies, all playing together, all wishful 
for the day of birth ; and all of them with some- 
thing to bring to the earth with them. One has 
an invention, another a disease; one has a war, 
another a treaty of peace ; one has a virtue, an- 
other a vice; and so on. Father Time arrives 
with his boat headed earthward, and the children 
rush to enter it ; but Time selects only those whom 

225 



226 LETTERS TO JACK 

Fate has destined to be born that day. Each baby 
who tries to enter the boat without his contribu- 
tion of good or evil to the world, is sent back to 
get it. 

It is not hard to see that Maeterlinck has 
Shakespeare's idea about Opportunities. The 
great English poet believes that there is but one 
for the whole lifetime of each individual. You 
remember from your school days the famous 
passage : " There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," 
etc. Shakespeare would have every one of us 
eternally watchful of his days, his hours and his 
minutes, in fear lest fortune's knock come and 
find him asleep. So each of us, according to the 
poet's views, brings something into the world; 
but, unlike Maeterlinck, Shakespeare believes 
that the something is always good. Bishop Spal- 
ding holds that Opportunities are spread out be- 
fore every man in his daily life. He does not 
believe in fate but he does believe in alertness. 
He would have shown no patience with Maeter- 
linck had he read his play, and commented upon 
it before his lamented death. 

I believe with Shakespeare that each and every 
human being has been given a certain something 
to do in this world; and that the certain some- 
thing is good, and for the benefit of the human 
race. I believe that, in the eyes of God, the cer- 



OPPORTUNITIES 227 

tain something which is given each one of us to 
do is a very great thing, even though it may 
appear very small to the eyes of men. I believe 
that, if this something be well done, the reward 
for the small will be as great as the reward for 
the big. Human beings judge only from what 
they see; and they see only what is material. 
God alone sees the hidden things. It is only the 
man who studies ants who realizes what wonder- 
ful little creatures they are, and how extraordi- 
nary are their works. When we carefully study 
an ant-hill, we have a sort of dim realization of 
how God sees men. Every little ant has its own 
work to do and he does it. Every little man and 
woman has his or her own work to do, and some- 
times does not do it. When we do that work, we 
contribute to the harmony of life. When we do 
not, we lose our great Opportunity. 

Shakespeare's idea is pretty near to the truth. 
The Great Opportunity for each and every 
human being is the opportunity to reach his or 
her last end — union with God. That Great Op- 
portunity is the same for everybody. There is, 
however, so I think, a special means given each 
of us, not only to attain that end, but also, in 
working for it, to help others attain it as well. 
I would call this latter the accidental Oppor- 
tunity. It is not entirely necessary, but w r e do 
best when we have taken it. It is in grasping 



228 LETTERS TO JACK 

it that we secure the largest amount of happi- 
ness in life and labor. 

No one is born into this world to spread dis- 
ease, to steal, to commit murder — to sin in any- 
way. But we have always our free will, and 
therefore the power to reject our opportunities. 
I believe that the evils of the world, beginning 
with the first, are all the result of rejected oppor- 
tunities — sins of some kind. It is inconceivable 
that God laid out the world as men have made 
it. It is too plain that what men had no chance 
to interfere with is good and well ordered. No 
evils spring from nature, but all spring from 
men. In the Arctic regions one never gets a cold 
— until others come in ; and behold the disorder 
starts at once. Nature alone is wonderful, but 
man often spoils her wonders. I do not think 
this would be, were men to grasp the knowledge 
of their Great Opportunity. 

You will hear men offer remedies by the thou- 
sand for every ill from which society suffers. 
You will, possibly, be impressed with the clever- 
ness of many of them. But, if you keep your 
spiritual eyes and ears open, you will note that 
shallowness is their all-embracing fault. The 
shallowness comes from the fact that most 
worldly men never think of the real end of their 
existence; never know anything of their Great 
Opportunity, or ignore it. Consequently, they 



OPPORTUNITIES 229 

place the " accidental" Opportunity, which is but 
the means to an end, as the goal of their desires. 
Money isn't given the rich for their own pleas- 
ure. It is given to them only as stewards. You 
may say the same of force, logic, business ability, 
statesmanship, imagination, lucidity, fluency, 
etc., etc. When the pleasure we get through our 
gifts becomes the only thing we deem desirable, 
we prostitute the gifts. We miss our Great 
Opportunity. 

Then what happens? Well, much the same 
as would happen if you insisted on damming up 
a river, because you wanted a lake for your own 
enjoyment. You send the water off into streams 
where none existed before. Things may read- 
just themselves to the change ; but the readjust- 
ment has to take into account a flooded country 
that once was fertile; a barren river-bed that 
once was beautiful; the loss of pure water to a 
country that once was blessed with it ; as well as 
some greater things that all have not vision 
enough to see. God's streams in men's hearts 
and souls are properly located. We cannot inter- 
fere with them for the sake of our own pleasures 
without doing harm. Sins are dams on the chan- 
nels of God's grace. The dams shut it off and 
send it another way, that is not God's way. What 
we keep of it changes because it is not flowing 
and free. We make it ours, not God's. Stag- 



230 LETTERS TO JACK 

nant, its life is withdrawn from it. No sparkle 
of the sunshine on its bosom can make up for the 
loss of the riches in its depths. Happily, some 
freshness is constantly coming in, which is called 
" Sufficient Grace," so there is always the Oppor- 
tunity to get our riches back again. To do that 
we have only to destroy the dam. 

There is only one " great" accidental Oppor- 
tunity given us. That is implied in the idea of 
" vocation." But there are countless minor op- 
portunities which, if grasped, may still suffice to 
bring us to our legitimate end. How does the 
one great, or the many minor opportunities come 
to us ? Through the medium of our daily duties. 
We may not know when, but we surely know how. 
He who honestly tries to live right, to do right, 
to think right, is not going to miss his "voca- 
tion" and therefore is not going to miss his 
opportunities. Many of them, the minor ones, 
he has not even dreamed of. Right living, doing, 
and thinking lower down the net into the sea. 
Many fish may come into it; some we never 
thought to catch, some we never knew existed. 



XXV 
LOYALTY 

God tolerates the worst of us ; but men are merci' 
less. We cannot live with a stone in the breast 
that beats like a heart, but that feels none of the 
higher emotions. 



When Loyalty leaves this earth there will be 
nothing worth while remaining; for the joy will 
have gone out of life. 



LOYALTY 
My dear Jack: 

Perhaps this letter should have been written 
long ago, instead of being left till near the end. 
But I had it in mind all the time ; and only today 
it seemed to take shape and call for its place 
with the others. I am not sorry that I waited, 
because the waiting gives the lesson a better 
chance to be remembered ; asking your attention, 
as it does, when there is little to follow that might 
make you forget. If you did forget all the rest, 
and only remembered the lesson of Loyalty, I 
think my task would still have been successfully 
accomplished. 

The most touching short story I ever read was 
about a beggar and his dog. I found it when I 
was a little boy, cried over it, and never quite 
forgot it. I think the story did a great deal for 
every dog I owned ; because it made me like dogs. 
The story itself was a very simple one: only a 
bit of pathos about a beggar-man and his lonely, 
hard life, and the loyalty of a little mongrel, 
who loved him so much that he refused every 
chance for dog comfort, in order to be with him. 
The beggar lost his dog only when the loyal brute 

233 



234 LETTERS TO JACK 

gave up his life for his master ; and, in his dog 
way, seemed to die happy in doing it. The story 
taught me my first lesson in Loyalty. I am glad 
it taught me the lesson young. Had I waited for 
men to teach it to me, I fear I would never have 
learned it. Is it not odd that from so lowly a 
source should come so noble a lesson? Yet not 
very odd after all. There was a neighbor of 
mine in Michigan — a lady — who knew where 
beautiful orchids grew wild ; but she would never 
tell the secret. Often she was kind enough to 
share her treasures with the Rector, but never the 
knowledge of where the Rector could find them 
for himself. "It is the natural place for such 
precious things to grow," was all she would say, 
"in a black swamp." It was like that with my 
first lesson in Loyalty. I found it in the story 
of a dog — and a mongrel at that. 

The pitiful part of the story lay in the fact 
that the beggar had nothing except the dog that 
remained true to him, and therefore had nothing 
to offer the dog in return for loyalty except 
his love ; but the dog had all of that. And with 
it he was happy and contented, albeit often hun- 
gry. I wonder how many human loyalties would 
stand the test of hunger ? 

It is a sad thing to say, my dear Jack — but 
there are many sad truths — that Loyalty is not 
as popular a virtue today as it once was. The 



LOYALTY 235 

days of Chivalry wer.e the days of Loyalty. The 
dawn of commercialism brought about its decay. 
There is a great picture in Sir Walter Scott's 
"Marmion." It is the picture of Douglas look- 
ing into the eyes of his departing guest, Marmion 
himself, whom he despised, but had nevertheless 
entertained because he had been sent by the 
King. Douglas refused Marmion 's hand, and 
gave his reasons without hesitation : 

"My manors, halls and towers have still 
Been open at my Sovereign's will, 
To each one whom he lists. 
My castles are my King's alone 
From turret to foundation stone. 
The hand of Douglas is his own; 
And never shall, in friendly grasp, 
The hand of such as Marmion clasp/' 

It took a pretty fine grade of Loyalty in that 
stern old warrior, to entertain a man he so 
despised; but he was loyal to the slightest wish 
of his King. Such as Douglas were most of the 
knights of old. 

" Business is business", as a motto, has driven 
out of many modern men all idea of Loyalty. 
Business says that it has to be cold-blooded. 
Perhaps it has. I do not know. And yet I think 
there might be found in a business man's heart 
some room for a warmer feeling than that of 



236 LETTERS TO JACK 

measured selfishness. I think that business men 
pay dearly for their adherence to their motto, by 
the loss of Loyalty that results amongst their 
helpers. I can understand why bees kill the 
drones as soon as they may safely get rid of them ; 
but humans are never beyond redemption. God 
tolerates the worst of us ; but men are merciless. 
We are surely like the servant whose story Christ 
so effectively narrated to a crowd of listeners, — 
the servant who was forgiven an enormous debt 
by his master, but would not forgive his fellow- 
servant a few pennies. "Business is business"? 
Yes, but perhaps we do not realize that "busi- 
ness" does not yet really know its own best inter- 
ests. I think it would be "good business" to be 
human, for we should be paid for it in Loyalty. 
When Loyalty leaves this earth, my dear Jack, 
there will be nothing worth while remaining ; for 
the joy will have gone out of life. The reason 
we are so unhappy today, in the midst of pros- 
perity and comfort, is because we are losing 
Loyalty. We are getting so that we do not 
understand it. We are becoming all selfish. The 
beggar-man of my story loved his dog, and so 
the dog loved the beggar-man. If a master has 
no love for those who serve him, how can he 
expect them to be loyal to him? Love is the 
foundation of Loyalty. Alas! Love is leaving 
us — "Business is business"^ One may, of course, 



LOYALTY 237 

not love his master, yet be loyal to him ; but such 
a man loves Gtod, and his Loyalty is securely 
founded. 

It seems to me that Loyalty is the thing that 
should be most appreciated in business. I think 
it is, in spite of mottoes to the contrary. Every- 
one with a heart is touched and made better by 
Loyalty. We cannot live with a stone in the 
breast that beats like a heart, but that feels none 
of the higher emotions. I knew a bishop, God 
rest his kind soul, who used to preach " regu- 
larity" to his students who always smiled at His 
Lordship's discourse. The smile never escaped 
the Bishop. i i I know what you are thinking of, ' ' 
he would say, "but you are wrong. You only 
imagine that I do not practice what I preach. 
But I am at least regularly irregular." I would 
rather be "regularly irregular," as he was, than 
so regular that every problem had to be solved 
with the unbendingness of the multiplication 
table. Even where regularity is made the foun- 
dation of a life, as in a monastery, there must 
be days when it is partially forgotten. But then 
the exception fits admirably into the rule; and 
irregularity becomes, in a way, regular. Christ 
would have condemned St. Peter because of his 
denial, if He had followed the rule ; but He did 
not. He knew St. Peter's heart, and saw Loyalty 
in it. So He made him Prince of the Apostles. 



238 LETTERS TO JACK 

Would you have me sum up all that I have 
written in all these letters, into one single coun- 
sel I Then hear it : be loyal — loyal to your God, 
loyal to your country, loyal to your ideals, loyal 
to your work, loyal to your superiors, loyal to 
yourself. 



XXVI 
BURDEN BEARERS 

Cold marble repays nothing, when the body be- 
neath it is only a lump of clay. Surely those who 
received nothing from time for bearing a world's 
burdens are entitled to justice from the Eternity 
that shall replace time. 



THE BURDEN BEARERS 

My dear Jack: 

Last night, anew, I picked up a copy of Seumas 
McManus' " Ballads of a Country Boy," and 
started to dip here and there into it. My wander- 
ing eye lit on a poem that had escaped my first 
reading of these fine ballads. It was called "The 
Silly Truen." I did not know what a "Truen" 
was supposed to be ; but a foot-note told me that 
it is a bird called "Corn-eraik," which in Irish 
is known as a "Truen," meaning "strength." 
But the bird belies its name; for it is a thin, 
ungainly bird, with weak, spindly legs. Its pecu- 
liarity is to lie on its back on the grass, with its 
legs toward the sky, and keep crying out some- 
thing that sounds, in Irish, like "strength with 
strength." The people have a saying that the 
Truen means to say: "What wonderful strength 
for two little feet of one poor bird to hold up all 
the skies!" Mr. McManus, in his ballad, rebukes 
the "Silly Truen" for his foolishness, frightens 
him to his feet and to the wing. "And lo! the 
skies moved not one bit when his heels were 
drawn away." But this fact made no change in 

241 



242 LETTERS TO JACK 

the " Silly Truen V ideas as to his strength, for 

.... "from the distance, floating easy, came his 

creaking cries — 
Oh, wonderful! one poor bird's feet to hold up 

all the shies!" 

Well, Jack, I sympathize with the Truen. I 
like the bird in spite of his mistaken idea about 
his strength. I wish men might get the same 
idea, though in a somewhat different form. Bar- 
ring out the absurd, I wish more people would 
act as if, on each and every one of them rested 
the burdens of all. That would make for a 
greater feeling of responsibility in the human 
race ; and, with responsibility, would surely come 
greater men and women — and more real charac- 
ter. It is the feeling of responsibility that forces 
men and women to the front. Responsibility 
produces the great poets, the great essayists, 
the great statesmen, the great generals. It 
is the feeling of responsibility in people, the 
idea that they are horn to be the Burden 
Bearers, that is to be thanked, under God, for 
all the morality and goodness and learning in the 
world. Some of the best and greatest of men 
were probably as silly as the Truen about their 
" strength"; but, like the Truen, you could dem- 
onstrate nothing to them ; and they went on act- 
ing as Burden Bearers. So they did things, and 



THE BURDEN BEARERS 243 

they do things, and they will go on doing things, 
till the trump of Gabriel sounds. And God 
speed them, if the things they do are good and 
beneficial ! 

It does not hurt others a bit, but it helps them 
much, if some people insist on being Burden 
Bearers. But it does hurt the Burden Bearers 
themselves. It hurts them very much, and 
always in proportion to the greatness of the bur- 
den they think they must carry. Then, many of 
the Burden Bearers are not far wrong about the 
fact of their vocation. God, without doubt, 
inspires still. He has selected many Burden 
Bearers — and they know it, and live up to it. 
These are the people who are happy in bearing 
the burdens, and could not be happy without 
them. They feel the weight : their backs are sore : 
their limbs are tired; but take off the burdens 
and they die. Friends tell them to retire, that 
they have done their work, that they needs must 
rest in their old age; but friends waste their 
breath, for these Burden Bearers cannot retire, 
cannot rest, and do not see that they grow old. 
The Burden is life to them ; and a body free from 
the weight is only a body looking, with wistful, 
tired eyes, toward the grave. 

In the ranks of the human Truens are Popes, 
Emperors, Kings, Priests, Patriots, Pleaders, 
Enthusiasts, Statesmen, Discoverers, Charity 



244 LETTERS TO r JACK 

Workers, Missionaries, Writers, Teachers and — 
oh, the wonder of the numbers of them ! — Fathers 
and Mothers. These are the Burden Bearers, 
some of them called " Fools for their pains"; 
some of them fools in reality; but the majority 
of them God's servants who die in His harness, 
glad to wear it to the end. 

Mr. McManus could frighten off his " Silly 
Truen," but he could not change its sad and rasp- 
ing cry. The world may often frighten its Bur- 
den Bearers, but it cannot keep them silent nor 
take away the consciousness of their tasks. They 
are themselves as sad as the cry of the Truen, and 
sometimes speak unpleasantly enough, too; but 
they are in a sad business, and in sad business 
the voice takes on no note of music. The per- 
sistency of the Burden Bearers is a marvel ; but 
neither rack nor rope nor axe can ever reach an 
inspired idea. 

Of course, the Burden Bearers have been 
nuisances to a great many people; and this is 
another strange thing about them — that the 
heavier the burden they insist on bearing, the 
greater nuisances they are to those who should 
be bearing part of it themselves, and the harder 
some people try to get rid of them. The whole 
might of the Roman Empire was invoked to rid 
the world of the Apostles, and it succeeded ; but 
their burdens were shifted to other backs, and 



THE BURDEN BEARERS 245 

these remained in spite of the Roman Empire. 
But the Roman Empire does not remain. 
It is dangerous to meddle with the Burden 
Bearers. 

Another strange thing about the Burden Bear- 
ers is often found in their seeming inconsistency. 
That is because they are human, and because 
humanity has the bad habit of not recognizing 
its own limitations. It illogically demands per- 
fection where perfection is not possible. In 
almost every case the Burden is finer and better 
than the one who carries it ; but he carries it in 
spite of that. The Abbe Roux puts the case well 
for the religious Burden Bearer: "This man 
has his defects; yet he cherishes truth and de- 
fends justice. And petty souls exclaim: 'Oh, 
the inconsistency! Oh, the scandal!' But pious 
hearts say : l Oh, the native nobility of the man ! 
Oh, the happy contradiction of the Christian!' " 

Do I counsel you to be a Burden Bearer? I 
do, if you have a burden that you feel you should 
bear. I do, if you feel that you have none. Get 
a burden and bear it. By which I mean: take 
unto yourself a responsibility for the sake of 
others. Good men and women should bear bur- 
dens not their own; for there are so many who 
will not bear even their own. The Burden 
Bearers serve to equalize things. Since equality 
is not a possibility, the Burden Bearer becomes a 



246 LETTERS TO JACK 

necessity; or the world goes fast to ruin. He 
who does "just enough" falls short of doing 
what is required of him. The "just enough" 
man is the man who is only tolerable. It takes 
more than that to be acceptable, even in ordinary 
society. 

It is their souls that enable the Burden Bear- 
ers to carry their loads. The fact of the existence 
of Burden Bearers is a proof of the existence of 
the soul. The fact of their carrying burdens is 
a proof of the soul's immortality, or "what's the 
use ?" There is no recompense in time that could 
ever repay them. But even if time could repay, 
where and when has it done so ? Columbus died 
in prison. Peter was crucified and Paul be- 
headed. Socrates drank of the hemlock. Milton 
was blind and Shakespeare to the end only a 
strolling actor. A Pope who "loved justice and 
hated iniquity" found it quite within the ordi- 
nary that he should "die in exile." Andreas 
Hofer was shot. Joan of Arc was burnt at the 
stake. Abraham Lincoln and Garcia Moreno fell 
before the assassin's pistol. Since when was it 
that time repaid while yet there was time to 
repay? Cold marble repays nothing, when the 
body beneath it is only a lump of clay; Surely 
those who received nothing from time for bear- 
ing a world's burdens, are entitled to justice from 
the Eternity that shall replace time. 



THE BURDEN BEARERS 247 

Do I counsel you to be a Burden Bearer % I do, 
because I counsel you to be good, and wise, and 
noble, and patriotic. I counsel you to have a 
heart; and I know that you have a soul. If I 
did not counsel you to be a Burden Bearer, I 
should be thus counselling you to let the world 
have its way with you, — which God forbid! 
"Our soul" (again I quote the Abbe Roux), 
"which the world pretends to divert with its van- 
ities, resembles the child which is consoled by 
the offer of a rattle instead of a star." To have 
the star, Jack, you must in some degree be a 
Burden Bearer. 



XXVII 
VISION 

How good God is to let us regret; for by regrets 
we keep humble and loving; by regrets we try to 
do the new tasks better. 



VISION 

My dear Jack: 

I find it inexpressibly hard to write this last 
letter and I do not know the reason why. Some- 
how, the others came easy enough and I never 
once lost my interest in them or forgot that they 
were the sweetest kind of labor — a labor of love. 
While writing them I was always seeing a thou- 
sand Jacks, young, aspiring, full of life, vigor 
and happy curiosity about the future that is fast 
opening to their vision. It seemed so well worth 
while to give these thousands all the time I dared 
snatch from a multitude of duties, that I was 
full of regret because I could not give them also 
the thought that they deserved. It was a droll 
experience to see my own head on these thou- 
sands of shoulders, my own head as it was at 
twenty. I tried to speak to them as I would have 
liked someone to have spoken to me when I 
needed advice and counsel. Twenty ? Ah me, I 
have more than doubled that today, my forty- 
sixth birthday; and I find myself sad enough 
to think of the things I might have done better, 
the missed opportunities. I sadly feel the hope- 

251 



252 LETTERS TO JACK 

less urging to try the tasks of twenty all over 
again. 

How good God is to let us regret : for by re- 
grets we keep humble and loving ; by regrets we 
try to do the new tasks better. It is only those 
who have made a complete failure of life who 
are without regrets, since only the complete fail- 
ures are fools enough to think that they did all 
things well. I dare to believe that, next best to 
hope for the future, is regret for the past. With- 
out regrets would there ever have been an Augus- 
tine"? Is it wrong to think that Peter's impetu- 
ous mistakes were allowed by his Master in order 
to form a part preparation for his long and 
fruitful apostleship ? I always find a solace, as 
well as pain, in my regrets ; a strange strength 
in thinking how I might have avoided them; 
withal, a strong desire (which I delight to think 
is holy) to warn and counsel others, that their 
regrets may be fewer than my own — but never 
a wish that they should live to forty and be 
entirely without regrets. I suppose that it is this 
mixed feeling that makes it hard for me to write 
the last letter. I know it is the last and should 
be the last, but it will always seem a premature 
ending to me who, at more than forty, love the 
thousands of Jacks at twenty. 

Youth is the age of visions, for it is in youth 
that we stand on the mountain top and look out 



VISION 253 

over the plain of our future journey — and youth 
never looks behind. Age loves retrospection; 
and, quite naturally, youth abhors it. Success 
depends on vision more than we know. The 
temptation of youth is to limit that vision to the 
smiling valley at his feet, which is the cause of 
most of youth's failures. Youth sees only the 
pleasures of the immediate future. He takes no 
account of the other valleys that lie behind the 
high and rocky hills and stretch so far, far away. 
Youth sees nothing of the distance when song 
comes up from the valley. Its birds are calling 
and its zephyrs blow sweet on his face, but 
Youth looks out not at all, but runs to his joy, 
and — to his regrets. Had he only lifted his eyes 
to the hills ; had he only counted the cost of the 
climbing; had he only anticipated the deserts, 
but, above all, had he only seen the gray line on 
the horizon and marked the valley of death, with 
the hopeful blue of the sky above it, he would 
have understood. Then for him the smiling val- 
ley would have been what God intended it should 
be — a place of preparation for the journey, 
where the trees grow fruit that, once gathered, 
lasts until the end ; where the streams offer liv- 
ing waters that take out of the desert half its 
terrors. 

Oh, thousands of Jacks, men in the making, 
children of that loving Father who calls from 



254 LETTERS TO JACK 

the blue sky above the gray desert line, lift up 
your eyes and hearts above the valley and see. 
At twenty Life spreads out before you. Take 
an account of it, and know that it is not play 
but work, and yet not work but play ; for work 
well done is pleasure, and pleasure well ordered 
is part of life's labor. Vision you need at twenty 
— the wide vision, the long vision, the sweeping 
vision, the vision splendid. 



SHORT STORIES BY MONSIGNOR KELLEY 



"The City and the World" 

By the Rt. Reverend Francis Clement Kelley, D.D., 
President of the Catholic Church Extension Society 



IT ISN'T just accidental that many of the best stories 
written deal with the seamy side of life. Maybe it's 
because we understand them better — because they so clearly 
mirror troubles of our own — that stories of that kind 
impress us most. Surely, if measured by such a standard, 
a priest's life, of all lives, ought to be about the least inter- 
esting from a story standpoint. How, then, was anyone to 
dream that here, in the very innermost recess of a priest's 
emotions, in the pulsing heart-throbs of a famous mission- 
ary's life, lay the perfect setting for a wonderful story and 
the background for an inspiring lesson? It's an entirely 
different kind of religious story — simple, straightforward, 
intensely human. And, mind you, it's only one of fourteen 
fascinating, all-absorbing short stories that readers now can 
secure in this beautifully illustrated, cloth-bound volume. 

You have a real surprise in store for you when you read 
"The City and the World." You'll find that Monsignor 
Kelley's short stories are remarkably interesting and enter- 
taining, too. You're sure to enjoy reading every single 
one of the entire fifteen in this volume, which contains the 
remarkable stories, "The Resurrection of Alta" and "The 
Flaming Cross." 

"The City and the World" will be mailed to any address 
postpaid on receipt of One Dollar ($1.00). 

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